Stormy chapter begins for Google, book publishers

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Last year, Google unveiled with fanfare a book-scanning partnership with publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but a year later the friendship has soured.

As this year's event kicked off, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and three others filed a lawsuit seeking to block Google's plans to scan copyrighted works without permission and to derail its push to make most of the world's books searchable online.

"I would say this year the bloom is definitely off the rose," said Pat Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers.

The publishers' hostility marks the first major opposition to Google, a company that quickly mushroomed into one of the world's biggest with few stumbling blocks.

Google has two key book-scanning programs. One, Google Print, is a deal with publishers allowing Google to scan approved books online, although readers can only see excerpts.

The program that has angered publishers and others is Google Library, which proposes to scan all the books in five major US and British libraries and allow online users to see just a few lines, using the tool as an internet card catalogue.

Google, has presented the plan as an altruistic endeavour to give exposure to lost titles and writers, creating a valuable tool for readers and researchers around the world.

But publishers and authors don't want a company like Google to own a digital repository of all the world's books unless they've given consent, fearing it might otherwise set a dangerous copyright law precedent.

Others fear the initiative will give Google something close to a monopoly over world culture.

"Our first reaction was: 'What a wonderful step for humanity'," Jean-Noel Jeanneney, president of the National Library of France, told Reuters in an interview. "But then very quickly I realised we had to be very careful."

Jeanneney, along with the heads of five other European national libraries, is agitating for the creation of a European digital library. The continent's libraries hold more than 2.5 billion books and periodicals.

"I've nothing against America and I've nothing against profit-making, but the organisation of the world's culture must not be left to an American company which is motivated by profit," Jeanneney said.

The European Union is supporting efforts by its member states to digitise their own libraries, but currently has no plan for a single, overarching digital archive.


"Confusion"

Some publishers fear that by scanning all the books in the world, Google will become the Napster of publishing -- giving books away for free online and depriving them of revenues.

"We're not trying to be Luddites," said Ursula MacKenzie, chief executive of Warner Books' UK arm. "But we need to make sure we don't make critical mistakes now that don't adversely affect the industry 10 years down the line."

Literary agent Carole Blake said in a daily journal of the Frankfurt fair's events: "As a consumer I regard Google as a friend...As an author and an author's agent I'm starting to regard it as a potential foe."

Google stopped scanning copyrighted books in August in the face of a growing outcry from publishers. But it plans to resume doing so next month.

"I think there is still a tremendous amount of confusion," said Jim Gerber, Google's director of content partnerships. "It's a book-finding tool, not a book-reading tool."

"Ninety-two percent of the world's books are neither generating revenue for the copyright holder nor easily accessible to potential readers," he added.

Even as they fight an ideological battle over copyright law, publishers -- including those suing Google for the library plan -- are continuing to supply books and supporting the Print program, as they say that is being done with their permission.

Others are following Google's lead. Yahoo has launched a similar effort, though it has pledged to scan copyrighted works only with publishers' permission.

And Germany's publishers' association is working on its own project to make the texts of newly published books searchable online -- but with the scanned texts stored in the publishers' computer servers rather than Google's or anyone else's.

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