Posted by Tamar Fruchtman, Senior Corporate Counsel

Today, Stanford University announced that it has expanded our original partnership to take advantage of our settlement agreement to make millions of works from its library collection accessible to readers, researchers, and book lovers across the United States. That means that if the settlement agreement is approved by the court, anyone in the US will be able to find, preview and buy online access to books from Stanford's library. Stanford joins the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Texas, who also expanded their original partnerships with Google.

Google was founded on the principle of making information more accessible to more people, so we're excited that Stanford has joined in our continuing efforts to bring these books to more people around the country. You can read more at the Stanford University website here.

Posted by Dan Clancy, Google Books Engineering Director

Last year, we joined with a broad class of authors and publishers to announce a settlement agreement that would make millions of out-of-print books available to students and readers in every part of the U.S., while forging new opportunities for rightsholders to sell access to their books. Tonight we submitted an amended version of the Google Books settlement agreement to the court.

We've traveled all over the world together with the authors and publishers to talk with people about our agreement, and over the last two months, we've read the many letters and briefs written to the court. We've also had discussions with the Department of Justice about the settlement.

The changes we've made in our amended agreement address many of the concerns we've heard (particularly in limiting its international scope), while at the same time preserving the core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rightsholders with ways to sell and control their work online. You can read a summary of the changes we made here, or by reading our FAQ.

We firmly believe in the promise of the agreement, as do our many supporters. As Sergey Brin recently wrote in a recent op-ed, "even if our cultural heritage stays intact in the world’s foremost libraries, it is effectively lost if no one can access it easily."

We're disappointed that we won't be able to provide access to as many books from as many countries through the settlement as a result of our modifications, but we look forward to continuing to work with rightsholders from around the world to fulfill our longstanding mission of increasing access to all the world's books.

If you'd like to hear more, you can join Chairman of the American Association of Publishers Richard Sarnoff, Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken and me for a public conference call at 9:15 PM Pacific/12:15 AM Eastern to discuss our amended agreement.

You can find more perspectives on the agreement from authors and publishers here and here.

UPDATE (2:40AM ET): For a replay of the call, use the following phone number and passcode:

Toll free: 888-203-1112
Replay Passcode: 3915040

We've removed the outdated conference call number from the post.

Posted by Johanna Shelton, Senior Policy Counsel

I thought I'd share a few more interesting YouTube clips from last week's hearing on "Competition and Commerce in Digital Books."

Chairman John Conyers explained that thanks to the Google Books program, "a library will be available in every household with an Internet connection -- this could be the greatest innovation in book publishing since the Gutenberg press."



Rep. Zoe Lofgren explained the history of orphan works legislation and argued, "as with all antitrust and copyright issues, there are competitors who sometimes try and seek a business advantage out of a dispute; it's important for us... to separate out that kind of squabbling from the actual legal issues that are before us."



Rep. Brad Sherman argued, "I think the only thing that's irresponsible is to tell the people of the world they're not going to have access to all the knowledge in all the books for which authors cannot be found. [...] This knowledge needs to be made available and I hope that we do that as quickly as possible."



Rep. Mel Watt argued, "the court can resolve this and in the meantime hopefully [Congress] will do something on orphan works."

Posted by Adam Kovacevich, Senior Manager, Public Policy Communications

There have been a few stories written already about this morning's House Judiciary hearing and David Drummond's announcement about opening up the Google Books program to even more competition.

Of course, everyone expected that some of the witnesses would praise the agreement and others would criticize it. But one of the most interesting things about the hearing were the reactions from Members of Congress. We gathered a few from news reports and our notes (unfortunately there's no official transcript available yet):

Rep. John Conyers, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee
“The settlement has, in my view, has been fair to copyright holders.” (Wall Street Journal) "A library available to every household with an Internet connection -- this could be the greatest innovation in book publishing since the Gutenberg press." (CNET) "Google is in this position not because they have engaged in anticompetitive behavior, but because they have built a better mousetrap in the eyes of mousetrap purchasers." (our notes)

Rep. Zoe Lofgren
"What I look at in this settlement is really the private sector achieving what we failed to achieve [with orphan works legislation]... I own a Kindle and I use it all the time, but one of the things that we're going to see here is for the first time some competition for Amazon because if we have an open source effort and a clearance of rights, you're going to have for the first time some heavy-duty competition." (our notes)

Rep. Brad Sherman
"I think the only thing that's irresponsible is to tell the people of the world they're not going to have access to all the knowledge in all the books for which authors cannot be found. That's what's irresponsible. Now when Congress doesn't act, maybe that's irresponsible. If you try to prevent others from acting, that may be irresponsible. If you choose not to act yourself, that's irresponsible. The overriding message here is this knowledge needs to be made available and I hope that we do that as quickly as possible. (our notes)

Rep. Lamar Smith
"[The settlement is a] novel and innovative way for people to acquire knowledge" (our notes)

Rep. Mel Watt
"The best protection of the prerogatives of the legislative branch is for us to legislate. Since we have haven't done very effectively the legislation on the orphaned works, it's hard for me to condemn the courts to have a case before it that determines what can be done and can't be done with orphaned works." (CNET)

We also filmed this behind the scenes video at the hearing. Check out the commentary from Chris Danielsen from the National Federation for the Blind, Judith Platt from the Association of American Publishers, Alan Davidson from Google's public policy team, and Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Books.

Posted by Johanna Shelton, Senior Policy Counsel

Our Senior VP for Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond is testifying this morning at today's House Judiciary hearing on "Competition and Commerce in Digital Books", and here's some of what he'll say about the Google Books settlement:

• Nothing about the settlement changes our firm belief that copying for the purpose of indexing is a fair use that is encouraged by existing copyright law precedents.

• The settlement is structured to make it easier for anyone – including Google’s competitors – to clear rights and license out-of-print books. Nothing in it makes it any more difficult for others to license these books.

• The settlement mostly affects only a very small segment of the book world – in-copyright, out-of-print books, which represent less than three percent of the commercial book market. Even though commercial demand may be low, we still believe it’s important to our culture and our literary history for people to be able to find and read these books, and for rightsholders to be able to market and sell them.

• The settlement is a strong complement to, and not a substitute for, orphan works legislation, which Google supports. An “orphaned” book is an abandoned book. Many out-of-print books, however, are not abandoned, and the registry created by the settlement will resolve legal disputes between authors and publishers over digital rights for older books.

You can read David’s written testimony, letters of support written to the court, what people have been saying about the settlement, and the full settlement agreement.

We believe strongly in an open and competitive market for digital books. That’s why we worked hard with authors, publishers, and libraries to create a settlement that will provide rightsholders with choice and compensation, lower barriers for other entrants, and complement orphan works legislative efforts.

UPDATE (11:25 a.m. ET): I'm at the hearing, and David just made a new announcement as part of our commitment to a competitive market for digital books.

He announced that for the out-of-print books (including orphan works) being made available through the Google Books settlement, we will let any book retailer sell access to those books. Google will host the digital books online, and retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore will be able to sell access to users on any Internet-connected device they choose. Retailers can also pursue their own digitization efforts of out-of-print books in parallel.

In essence, this extends our initiative announced earlier this summer -- which allows publishers in our Partner Program to market their in-print works through Google Books -- to out-of-print books included in the settlement.

UPDATE (9/11/09): Check out the video of David's testimony below.

Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst

We've spent a lot of time with authors, publishers, academics, civil rights groups and other communities this summer discussing how the Google Books settlement will impact them. We've met individually with a number of organizations and participated in their events. And we've hosted our own forums across the country.

Yesterday, we took part in another call with even more groups, including the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Federation of the Blind, the United States Students Association and others, who together voiced their support for the agreement.

These groups, along with many others we've heard from in past months, represent a large and diverse collection of many millions of people, and they believe, like we do, that providing more access to more books is of critical importance. They have voiced their support through videos, op-eds, and tweets, as well as through statements sent directly to the Court.

In editorials, The New York Times and the Washington Post have echoed the importance of increasing access to information. And just this week, The Economist weighed in with its support for the approval of the settlement and cited the benefits for authors, publishers, libraries and researchers "from Manhattan to Mumbai."

We continue to be inspired by these stories, and we've gathered them all on a new site that can be found here. We know this is a complex issue, and we want to make sure all of these voices are heard. As we get closer to the court date for the settlement approval, we anticipate there will be even stories more to share. And we'll make sure to add them to this site.

Posted by Jane Horvath, Global Privacy Counsel

We're excited about the wide range of support that the Google Books settlement has received. Some people have asked how Google's privacy practices apply to Books and the settlement, and, last month, we published an extensive FAQ.

Since last spring, we've had detailed discussions with a number of groups about our privacy practices within Google Books as well as some of our preliminary thoughts about what privacy protections we want to build into services authorized by our settlement agreement. As part of our outreach, we talked to Federal Trade Commission staff to hear their thoughts and answer their questions on privacy and Books. Rather than limit our conversations to the FTC and other specific organizations, though, we wanted to share the results of our exchange with the wider public by releasing a formal Privacy Policy for Google Books, and by highlighting a letter we recently sent to the FTC on Google Books and privacy.

While Google Books has always been covered by the general Privacy Policy for all of Google's services, we understand that the privacy of reading records is especially important to readers and libraries. We know that users want to understand how Google's privacy practices apply to Books today, and what will happen after the settlement. To provide all users with a clear understanding of our practices, and in response to helpful comments about needing to be clearer about the Books product from the FTC and others, we wanted to highlight key provisions of the main Google Privacy Policy in the context of the Google Books service, as well as to describe privacy practices specific to the Google Books service. We've also described some privacy practices for services created by our proposed settlement agreement, which is currently awaiting court approval.

As we noted in our letter to the FTC, because the settlement agreement has not yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement have not been built or even designed yet, it's not possible to draft a final privacy policy that covers details of the settlement's anticipated services and features. Our privacy policies are usually based on detailed review of a final product -- and on weeks, months or years of careful work engineering the product itself to protect privacy. In this case, we've planned in advance for the protections that will later be built, and we've described some of those in the Google Books policy. We have also covered several privacy issues in our letter to the FTC on Google Books. You can read more of that exchange on the FTC's website here.

We take our privacy commitments to our users very seriously. It's important to note that like all of our privacy policies, this one is legally enforceable by the FTC, which has helped us clarify our practices and policies through comments and questions.

Posted by Johanna Shelton, Senior Policy Counsel

How does the Google Books settlement affect competition? The question was the focus of an event hosted here in Washington by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), of which Google is a member.

David Balto, an antitrust lawyer, consumer advocate, and former policy director at the FTC, addressed the topic head-on when he presented his paper on the pro-competitive nature of the settlement, and a panel of legal commentators (James Grimmelmann and Jonathan Band) answered questions and provided their thoughts in response. In case you missed the event, a video of the event was just posted on the CCIA website.

While there was debate over specific aspects of the settlement agreement, I was struck by several themes that came out of the discussion: the public benefits of the settlement in expanding access to books online are overwhelmingly clear; the settlement should be approved despite the complexity of the legal issues involved; and providing more choice and more competition in the book industry is a good thing.

Helping readers get access to more books in more ways is exactly why we entered into our agreement last year with authors and publishers. We believe choice is a good thing too - our settlement agreement is non-exclusive and makes it easier for other online book distributors to efficiently license works and innovate. We hope to see more discussion on this in the future.

Check out what David Balto and Ed Black, CCIA President and CEO, had to say about Google Books in the short videos below. Other experts -- including Einer Elhauge from Harvard Law School, Mark Lemley from Stanford Law School (and an attorney for Google), and J. Gregory Sidak of Criterion and Jerry A. Hausman from MIT -- have weighed in with their support as well.

"I've looked carefully at the Google Books settlement to try to determine whether it will harm or benefit consumers, and I ultimately conclude that the settlement will be very beneficial." --David Balto, antitrust lawyer and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress


"...there's no doubt that the project is of tremendous value and importance to society."
-- Ed Black, President and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)

Posted by Johanna Shelton, Senior Policy Counsel

I was encouraged this morning to read the comments of Viviane Reding, the European Union's media commissioner, about the Google Books project and settlement:

"Google Books is a commercial project developed by an important player. It is good to see that new business models are evolving which could allow bringing more content to an increasing number of consumers."

My Brussels colleague Antoine has more to say on this over at our European Public Policy Blog.

Posted by Johanna Shelton, Senior Policy Counsel

Much of the world's knowledge is trapped in physical books. People fortunate enough to attend large research institutions like Stanford or the University of Michigan can access vast library collections, but people living in inner cities or rural areas have a much harder time accessing this level of knowledge.

We're hoping to help change that. Under an agreement we announced last year with authors and publishers, Google will be able to make millions of books from major research libraries more accessible for all Americans, including those in minority, disability, and other communities that have typically lacked equal access to information.

That was the focus of an event that we co-hosted this week with the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law. Distinguished voices from civil rights, academic, and library organizations joined Google Senior Vice President David Drummond to discuss the legal, technical, and social barriers that must be overcome to truly equalize access to knowledge.

Equalizing access is about more than one product or one company -- but we're glad that Google Books can be a part of the solution. As Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, put it:

"If there's one last frontier that we have to conquer on the road to equal opportunity in America, it's access to knowledge, access to quality public education, and access to higher education for all... The Google Book Search project is a unique contribution to that effort."

We'll be making video of the entire event available in the next few days. In the meantime, check out what Wade and our other panelists had to say about Google Books in these short videos.

Update (8/25/09): The full video of the event is now available on YouTube.


"A down payment on equal opportunity..."
-- Wade Henderson, President and CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)


"Millions and millions of books that blind people could never get before -- they’ll now be able to get through digitized formats..."
-- Charles S. Brown, Esq., Legal Consultant to the President of the National Federation of the Blind


"We're very confident that the great benefits of this tool are going to be transforming in nature..."
-- Brent Wilkes, National Executive Director, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)


"We believe it is a way to eliminate that digital divide..."
-- Rhea Ballard-Thrower, Associate Professor and Director of the Law Library, Howard University School of Law


"Geographic barriers, economic barriers, language barriers – all of those things will be become diminished..."
-- Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law and Founder and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, Howard University School of Law
(Check out the text of Professor Mtima's remarks for the event.)

Posted by Johanna Shelton, Policy Counsel & Legislative Strategist

I'm here at Howard University this morning for our Google Book Search event, but I came across this New York Times editorial today about the settlement that I wanted to share. We may not agree with everything in it (particularly on privacy and the settlement's approach to orphan works), but I appreciated that the Times editorialists recognized that Google Books "holds great promise for increasing access to knowledge." From the editorial:

Google's effort could create new interest in millions of out-of-print books, which would be made available at no cost at public libraries. That means that a student at a community college or a freelance writer could access the same books as a Harvard professor.

At a time when publishing's economic model is threatened, there is also an important financial upside for authors and publishers. Google would charge users for accessing copyrighted books from their own computers and sell online ads, and it would give writers and publishers 63 percent of the revenue. The settlement would create a books rights registry to distribute payments.

Despite the claims otherwise by some critics of the settlement, the Times also noted that "Google's access to most books would not be exclusive since Microsoft or Joe's Online Library could cut their own deal with authors and publishers and scan books as well." Here here.

Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst

The Google Book Search settlement agreement will dramatically expand online access to millions of works, opening a new chapter in equalizing access to information for users nationwide.

For those of you in D.C., we hope you'll join us this Wednesday for a special forum with the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law that will take a closer look at what this agreement means for historically disadvantaged groups in particular:

"Equalizing Access to Knowledge"
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM ET

Howard University School of Law
President's Suite, Notre Dame Hall (enter through Houston Hall)
2900 Van Ness Street, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Find directions and map link here.
Click here to RSVP

David Drummond, Google's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, will explain how the agreement will impact social justice and access to information. His keynote will be followed by a panel discussion featuring leaders from the civil rights, law, education, and business communities:

Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law
Wade Henderson, President and CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Charlie Brown, Adviser to the President, National Federation for the Blind
Brent Wilkes, National Executive Director, League of United Latin American Citizens
Rhea Ballard-Thrower, Director of the Law Library, Howard University School of Law

Hope to see you there. In the meantime, check out the settlement agreement site to learn more about this agreement and its implications for readers, writers, students, scholars, libraries, and the public at large.

Posted by Dan Clancy, Engineering Director for Google Books

Last year, we signed a settlement agreement with authors and publishers that, if approved by the court, will unlock access to millions of books for anyone in the US. We reached another important milestone a few weeks ago, as University of Texas and University of Wisconsin-Madison announced new agreements with Google to broaden access to their collections under the settlement.

Recently, we've heard questions about our agreement and what it will mean for user privacy. Privacy is important to us, and we know it's important to our users, too. We have a strong privacy policy in place now for Google Books and for all Google products. But our settlement agreement hasn't yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement haven't been built or even designed yet. That means it's very difficult (if not impossible) to draft a detailed privacy policy. While we know that our eventual product will build in privacy protections -- like always giving users clear information about privacy, and choices about what if any data they share when they use our services -- we don't yet know exactly how this all will work. We do know that whatever we ultimately build will protect readers' privacy rights, upholding the standards set long ago by booksellers and by the libraries whose collections are being opened to the public through this settlement.

We're thinking hard about how best to build privacy protections into the products authorized under the settlement. We've been having ongoing discussions with a wide range of privacy advocates, and we look forward to talking more with them and others throughout the industry about how to protect the privacy of people who search, browse, and buy books online.

Privacy organizations and Google have a lot to agree on: expanded, free online access to library books should be supported by continued privacy protections for readers. You can read our initial thoughts on how to do so in our FAQ. To read more about privacy at Google, visit our Privacy Center, and stay tuned for more details as we have them.

Posted by Dan Clancy, Engineering Director, Google Books

At a Wired conference yesterday, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, made some fairly critical comments about Google Books that have, predictably, created press attention. We can't presume to understand the full nature of Amazon's statements, but we believe they go to the heart of our continuing efforts to make books more available and were likely motivated by recent news about Google Books.

Last month at the BEA conference in New York, we discussed our plans to expand Google Books for our publishing partners. By the end of this year, we hope to give publishers, as well as authors, the ability to sell online access to their works so that people can find, purchase and read books on the devices they choose, including computers, mobile phones, laptops, netbooks, or e-readers from multiple vendors. This service will also be designed to allow multiple retail partners to distribute these books, similar to the way book sales work in the physical market.

We believe more choice is good. That's exactly why our vision for Google Books is to create an open platform that, among other things, allows any bookstore, library, publisher partner or individual website developer to provide their users with the ability to search across and preview books in a similar way to Amazon's Search Inside! feature.

Providing more choice is also why we entered into our settlement agreement last year with authors and publishers. The settlement will provide users with more access to books. We still strongly believe that copying for the sake of indexing is a fair use that is encouraged by existing copyright law precedents. Fair use is critical to the way web search and book search work and is already well established.

The settlement allows us to bring real benefits to users. It opens access to millions of books that are no longer published; it expands access for people with disabilities; and it compensates rightsholders for new uses. And, through the creation of the Registry, and a database of copyright claims information, the settlement makes it easier for others to find rightsholders and license their works. Other companies, including Amazon, and individuals can contact rightsholders directly or work through the Registry (if the rightsholder has authorized the Registry to do so) to license works for new uses. And for books whose rightsholders can't be found, we also support comprehensive orphan works legislation, as we've said in the past.

In the end, we believe more access is good for everyone, Google and Amazon alike. But most importantly, it's good for readers who simply want to find and enjoy books, and for authors and publishers who want to create and sell works.

Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst

As I mentioned last week, the University of Michigan recently announced an expansion of its partnership with Google, making millions of books from its library collection accessible to readers, researchers, and book lovers across the United States.

This weekend Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan, penned an op-ed in the Ann Arbor News explaining that the approval of the Google Book Search settlement agreement will result in "ubiquitous online access to a collection unparalleled in size and scope, preservation of the scholarly and cultural record embodied in the collections of great research libraries, new lines of research, and greatly expanded access to the world's printed work for persons with print disabilities." Check it out when you have a chance.

Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst

A few weeks ago we blogged about how the Google Book Search settlement agreement will expand access to books for readers in the United States. We recently took another important step forward, when the University of Michigan announced an expanded agreement with Google that will take advantage of the settlement to expand public access to millions of works from the University's collection.

Today we want to explain one area of the settlement in more detail: how the agreement increases access to out-of-print books, including books that some refer to as "orphans."

Out of Print Books

The settlement covers books that Google scans from libraries’ collections, the majority of which may be in copyright but are out of print. These books would ordinarily be hard to access, and one of the principal benefits of the settlement agreement is that it allows people to search, preview, and purchase access to them.

The settlement will also make it far easier for anyone -- including Google's competitors -- to license the use of most out-of-print books. As authors and rightsholders claim their books under the settlement, information about what books have been claimed and who claimed them will be made publicly available, allowing others to take advantage of this information. What's more, the settlement creates an independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry run by authors and publishers that will be able to license other services on behalf of rightsholders who want it to do so.

Today, it may be costly for someone to track down the rightsholders of many older works, and there's not much reason for those rightsholders to make themselves easy to find, because they can't earn any money from their work by selling it in stores.

The settlement agreement addresses this conundrum in concrete ways. Because out-of-print books will get a renewed commercial life through Book Search and other services licensed by the Registry, rightsholders are more likely to claim their books. In this way, the settlement creates real financial incentives for owners of out-of-print works to come forward.

In addition, one of the Registry's core missions is to locate the owners of unclaimed books in order to help authors and publishers claim their works and the revenues due them under the settlement. There is an extremely broad notification program already underway.

Orphan Works

While the majority of all book titles are out-of-print, only a minority of them are what some people call “orphans.” This term isn’t defined in U.S. law and people disagree on the definition, but it typically refers to in-copyright works whose owners cannot be identified or found.

As “parent” rightsholders claim their books through the Book Rights Registry, we think it will become clear that most out-of-print books are not actually “orphans.” Books that were once difficult for anyone to license will become books that are very easy for everyone to license, either through the Book Rights Registry or directly from their owners. Furthermore, many books that some think are in-copyright orphans (including a large percentage from 1963 or before) are actually out-of-copyright, and Google is working to make more information available that can clarify their copyright status.

Of course, some rightsholders may still be too difficult to find. Under the settlement Google will be able to open up access to truly orphaned books, but we still think more needs to be done to allow anyone and everyone to use these works. Any company or organization that wants to open up access to this untapped resource should be able to do so. The settlement is not a panacea, since it only covers a subset of orphaned works, provides only certain uses, and is not able to extend these uses to other providers. The need for comprehensive orphan works legislation is not diminished.

That's why Google has been working for years to pursue legislation to provide meaningful avenues for any entity to use orphaned works. We first explained our views to the Copyright Office on this subject over four years ago, and it will remain one of Google's priorities to work to pass effective orphan works legislation.

Fortunately, there isn't an either-or choice between legislation and the settlement. While we work with others towards a comprehensive orphan works solution, the settlement agreement takes one important step towards opening up access to orphaned books in the meantime. If the agreement is approved, anyone across the nation -- from a school child in rural America to a blind PhD candidate -- will have an easy way to go online and read books that would otherwise be hard to access. We are excited about making that possible.