The nation's libraries are urging the judge overseeing a settlement that would clear the path for Google to control access to millions of digitized books to carefully evaluate the ambitious project, warning that the deal could grant the search giant extraordinary power to censor, price gouge and invade the privacy of readers.

The nation's library associations sternly warned federal court judge Denny Chin in a letter filed with the court Monday that the Google Book Settlement might give the search giant a monopoly on the world's digital works.

They also argued that the Book Registry, a new non-profit that will handle digital rights for all copyright holders, might take a cue from academic journal publishers and charge libraries ultra-high prices for institutional subscriptions to the Google database.

At issue is Google's attempt to create the worlds' largest digital library by scanning millions of books housed in the nation's research libraries. Depending on the copyright status of the book, Google shows snippets to full-texts of the books online and in search results. That prompted the Author's Guild to sue Google in 2005, leading to a settlement in 2007 that covers all book copyright holders. That deal gives Google various legal rights to scan, index, display and sell all books in print online.

The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries are not opposing the proposed settlement, though the Justice Department is already looking into as a possible anti-trust matter.

However, their letter (.pdf) to a Manhattan federal district court adds to the growing chorus of voices opposing and raising questions about the deal.

For instance, the libraries warn that the settlement directs the Registry to set prices by looking to current models.

A university library spends an average total of $4.3 million a year for online journal subscriptions. If journal subscriptions are “comparable” to the institutional subscription, and a library pays $4.3 million for access to 31,000 journals, one can only imagine the price the Registry might insist upon for a subscription to millions of books.

Google will also face pressure, internationally and domestically, to censor the database, and the agreement gives it the right to keep up to 15 percent of the books it scans out of the available database for no reason.

After all, the Library Project will allow minors to access up to 20% of the text of millions of books from the computers in their bedrooms and to read the full text of these books from the public access terminals in their libraries. Although public libraries have often contended with demands to eliminate or restrict access to specific books, any collection management decision by a particular librarian affected only that community. Here, by contrast, if Google bends to political pressure to remove a book, it will suppress access to the book throughout the entire country.

The librarians also note that the agreement includes 17 pages on security procedures to prevent unauthorized access to the copyrighted books, but does not mention reader privacy.

Rights holders who wish to register their objections or opt-out of the deal have until September 4 to do so, and the final hearing on the settlement comes on October 7.

Photo: libraryman/Flickr

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