socialmedian: Internet Archive Announces Everybody-Against-Google Coalition [Digital Daily]

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Source: All Things Digital

Aug 21, 2009

Summary

As the Google Book Search Settlement nears a September 4 deadline for rightsholders to opt-out of the deal, some powerful interests are allying to oppose it. Rallied together by the Internet Archive and veteran Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO), the Special Libraries Association, the New York Library Association and the American Society of Journalists and Authors are forming a coalition called the Open Book Alliance. Its purpose: to make the case to an already concerned Justice Department that the $125 million settlement — which will allow Google (GOOG) to digitize some 18 million books — is an anticompetitive restructuring of the book industry, and one that could give Google a monopoly on the largest digital library of books in the world. And it might. There are some who claim it grants the company a blanket license on millions of so-called orphan books, works still in copyright but whose copyright owners are unknown.