Google tries to sidestep criticism of $125m book project
Internet giant works to gather support from proponents of digitisation scheme
Bobbie Johnson in San Francisco, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009

Google today attempted to rally supporters of its deal with the US publishing industry, in an effort to combat growing criticism of the $125m (£76m) agreement.
In a press conference today, Google said its settlement with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild - which was first agreed to last year - would allow millions of books to be digitised, proving many people with the chance to access information that was otherwise unavailable to them.
"The obvious social justice and social utility impact that the book project is going to have ... are getting lost in the discussion," said Professor Lateef Mtima, director of the Institute of Intellectual Property & Social Justice at Howard University, a pioneering black college in Washington.
He suggested it would help "so many segments of our society today who for decades have been left out of the communication exchange, who have been on the wrong side of the digital divide".
Under the terms of the proposed deal, Google would pay $125m for the right to legally to digitise millions of books still under copyright - and agree to split the proceeds from selling those books with publishers and authors.
However, a number of companies, organisations and governments have publicly opposed the deal in recent weeks - submitting documents opposing the terms of the agreement to the US federal court that is investigating it.

In response to recent criticism from internet rival Amazon, Google brought out representatives of a variety of groups that support the settlement, including the US Students Association and the American Association of People with Disabilities.
"Part of opportunity is access to information - and that is a barrier that blind people face," said Chris Danielson of the National Federation for the Blind. "Even with existing services we probably have access to only 5% of the books that are published each year in the United States."
"The Google books settlement ... will give us access to millions of titles, thereby giving blind people more access to more books than we have ever had in all of human history. It is critically important that this be considered in any discussion of the Google books project."
However, critics of the deal said that this does not address their concerns with the settlement - which are not about whether digitising books is useful, but whether the specific terms of the deal will hamper innovation and damage authors.

Read the full article at The Guardian online.