21 August 2009

Google's digital library monopoly challenged by coalition

Three major technological players are uniting to prevent Google achieving a monopoly on what could potentially be the world's largest virtual library.

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo! have banded together and agreed to support the Open Book Alliance launched by the Internet Archive. The alliance aims to provide competition to Google's increasing dominance as a host of digitised works, and opposes the legal settlement that will allow publishers to register works with Google and receive compensation for each subsequent sale.

A previous agreement was reached in 2008, when lawsuits against Google's unauthorised scanning of books were settled by a payment of £125m (£76m) to create the Book Rights Registry. The registry offers publishers and authors 70 per cent of revenue generated from the sale of digitised books, with Google keeping the remaining 30 per cent.

The new agreement will see Google being granted the right to digitise orphan works, where rights-holders are unknown. Orphan works are estimated to comprise 50 to 70 per cent of all books published since 1923.

The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation that has digitised over 1.5 million books to date, all of which are offered to the public free of charge. The archive's founder Brewster Kahle has long been opposed to Google's settlement, stating: "Google is trying to monopolise the library system.

"If this deal goes ahead, they're making a real shot at being 'the' library and the only library."

Microsoft and Yahoo! have confirmed their participation in the Open Book Alliance spearheaded by the Internet Archive, but Amazon has thus far declined to comment prior to the alliance's official launch.

Comments and complaints over the deal need to be registered by September 4, and the decision will be reached in early October. If the agreement is successful, Google will have achieved a court-sanctioned monopoly on digitised literature.

The US Department of Justice has already begun an anti-trust investigation into the impact of Google's agreement.

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