Introduction

The Google Book Settlement is the most significant and controversial development in the history of books, as well perhaps in the history of copyright; it is the largest digitization project that Google, Inc. has undertaken in partnership with a number of major research libraries and publishers. There are an estimated 32 million books in the world, 15 million are fiction books and 17 million are non-fiction books.

Since 2002 Google has scanned 10 million books, mostly non-fiction book of which 15 – 20% are in the public domain, 10% are in copyright and in-print and 70 – 75% is in Copyright and out – of – print, without the publishers and authors consent.

The library project involves scanning every document and file in the following libraries and include of out-of print works from Michigan, Stanford, Ca, NYPL and Oxford (Harvard). The goal is to make a scan of each and every book on the planet. According to Google it costs about 30$ per book and to date 300 – 800 million dollars have been spent.

One can argue that books are probably the most traditional of all copyrightable works ever developed particularly for protecting the authors and publishers of books. Through the years, copyrights have been granted to creators of all kinds of works from films to software. While most of these other types of copyrighted works are strongly affected by new forms of content production and distribution in the course of the so-called “digital revolution”, books seem to have been relatively immune to the at least till now on the very same technological changes.

The Google Book Search has inspired intense controversies between supporters, painting an optimistic picture of universal access to all books ever published in the world for virtually everybody, and adversaries, fearing the rise of a knowledge monopolist, who exploits authors, publishers and readers alike.

The Law Suit

In 2005 two lawsuits were filed in the United States. The first by the American Authors Guild in a class action, filed in September 2005, the second by 5 publishers, the 2 cases were consolidated later, none of the 5 libraries were the subject of this lawsuit. The plaintiffs asserted breach of copyright, claiming that the scanning amounted to an infringement of copyright. Google on the other hand defended claiming consistently that it was fair use. There was a great deal of case law that came down between the filing of the suit and the first Settlement proposed.

The Settlement

In 2006, the parties engaged with Google to explore how to achieve a settlement of the lawsuits. Negotiations continued for more than two years. Google brought its library partners into some of the negotiations because the litigants envisioned a settlement under which Google would provide institutional subscriptions to libraries, and the settlement agreement needed to include some provisions for that, including a price setting mechanism. The first settlement (GBS 1.0) was announced on 28 October 2008 and involved a large amount of money paid in a variety of locations and includes the formation of a Books Rights Registry which will aggregate the royalty collection and the data base management.

In terms of the Settlement $45 million has been set aside as payouts to rights holders whose books Google have already been scanned, $60 for each book, $15 for each insert, and $5 for each partial insert. The lawyers for the author and publisher subclasses will get a total of $45.5 million if the settlement is approved. The rest of the settlement funds are being used to create the Book Rights Registry, which will be created upon approval of the settlement, although $12 million has already been spent on administrative matters, such as notifying members of the class about the settlement.

The proposed settlement agreement provided for the consolidation of the two lawsuits into one class action, the plaintiffs consisted of an Author Subclass and a Publisher Subclass to represent all persons or entities having a U.S. copyright interest in one or more books as of Jan. 5, 2009. In light of U.S. treaty commitments, this settlement would have given Google a license to virtually every in-copyright book in the world. The reason being that members of international copyright treaties agree to recognize copyrights in their countries of all works of foreign nationals whose countries are members of that treaty.

Due to the immense load of objections by foreign rights holders, an amended Settlement was proposed. The most significant change from Settlement 1.0 to Settlement 2.0 was a significant narrowing of the settlement’s geographic scope and excluded some foreign works by defining covered works to include only books registered in the U.S. or published in Canada, the U.K., or Australia.

The foreign rights holders objected to GBS 1.0 because under it Google would have gotten a license to scan all foreign rights holders’ books and to commercialize those that were not commercially available in the U.S. This would have meant that Google could have commercialized virtually all foreign books (which are generally not available in U.S. bookstores), unless their rights holders filled out complicated paperwork to protest this. As a result of these objections GBS 2.0 was proposed.

For purposes of GBS 2.0, a “Book” is a written or printed work that meets the following three conditions as of January 5, 2009:

• It was published or distributed to the public or made available for public access under the authorization of the work’s U.S. copyright owner or owners on sheets of paper bound together in hard copy form; and
• It is subject to a U.S. copyright interest (either through ownership, joint ownership, or an exclusive license) implicated by a use authorized by the Amended Settlement.
• If a “United States work,” it was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office; and
• If not a “United States work,” it was either registered with the U.S. Copyright Office or was published in Canada, the United Kingdom or Australia.

Under GBS 2.0 the only foreign rights holders who remain in the GBS settlement are those from the UK, Canada and Australia. Richard Sarnoff, chairman of AAP, explained that these countries had legal cultures and publishing industries similar to those in the U.S. How different, though, is South Africa’s legal and publishing culture from that of Canada or Australia?

That GBS 2.0 will take foreign rights holders out of the settlement class does not necessarily mean that Google will no longer scan foreign books. Nor does it mean that foreign books already scanned by Google will be deleted from the corpus. These books will almost certainly be available for Google’s use for non-display purposes, such as the development of better automated translation tools.

Being dropped from the settlement is also no guarantee that foreign books will not be commercialized. If foreign rights holders want to be certain that Google will stop scanning their books, remove the books from the GBS corpus, or cease commercially significant uses, they may have to sue Google to achieve their objectives.

Google does, however, intend to continue scanning foreign books into its search base, and to display snippets in response to search queries. In other words, Google intends to continue the existing Library Project with respect to the foreign books. Because the GBS 2.0 does not cover these books, their rights holders could sue Google for copyright infringement for scanning and snippet display and Google presumably would defend itself by claiming that its activities fall within the fair use privilege. Google also will attempt to negotiate for permission for full text display from foreign collecting societies that have the authority to represent the copyright interests of authors and publishers in their countries.

Eliminating the foreign books from the settlement means the elimination of many of the foreign rights holders from the class of plaintiffs. The plaintiff class is defined as the holders of a U.S. copyright interest in a book under the settlement; if a foreign book no longer is covered by the settlement, its rights holder no longer is a member of the plaintiff class. By removing foreign language books and their rights holders from the settlement, the parties have removed the source of much of the controversy concerning the settlement. At the same time, the products available under the GBS 2.0 will be far less comprehensive.

A fairness hearing on the GBS 2.0 was held in February 2010 and is currently being considered for approval by the presiding judge.

Criticism

Publishers fear the “Napsterization” of commercially valuable books in case the GBS would be “hacked” and all of the books therein, including the in-print books which are not available for display uses could be “liberated” by the hackers. Even more, attractive online book service providers such as the GBS could invite authors to cut out publishers as the traditional middle-man – especially, as they are already being asked to perform the bulk of copy-editing, formatting, and other tasks of book preparation anyway.

Some publishers criticize the suggested price setting procedures, fearing too low digital prices. As planned, Google would set prices for institutional subscriptions to out-of-print books in the corpus in consultation with the BRR, while prices for consumer purchases would be set through an algorithm designed to optimize the market returns for each books, although rights holders remain free to set their own prices for each book.

Similarly some professional authors worry that they will not be adequately compensated for Google’s commercial use of their books insofar Google keeps prices of GBS institutional subscriptions low.

While some publishers and professional authors are concerned prices could be too low, library associations and academic authors share the oppositional concern that approval of the settlement could, over time, lead to price gouging for institutional subscriptions. In addition to the power derived from the de facto monopoly that the settlement would confer on Google, super competitive prices could also result from the consultation with the BRR, whose mission is to represent rights holders who will almost certainly press for higher prices.

Users of the public access terminals at higher education and public libraries will be charged a fee for every page of every GBS book that patrons print out, and this fee will go to the BRR. While photocopying the same pages from a book taken off a library bookshelf would have been free as fair use in the US or as a private copy in Europe, this could be treated as a “precedent” by publishers for charging libraries per-page-copying fees more generally.

As GBS e-books will only be available online, readers are not able to lend their books to friends, resell their books or make private copies – all these are free uses of traditional books and at least of some other e-book formats.

Similarly to libraries, consumers also run the risk of paying monopoly prices, as Google intends to sell out-of-print e-books at an average price of $8.65; a rather high price given that in-print e-books are currently selling for $9.99 and sometimes less and are not bound to Internet access and server availability as in the GBS model.

Google’s unqualified right to sell the corpus to anyone without getting consent from BRR or anyone else as well as Google’s technological monopoly raise doubts across stakeholder groups with regard to quality and sustainability of GBS. Even more, Google can exclude books from GBS for editorial reasons, creating a risk of censorship. This risk is particularly salient as GBS searches cannot be conducted on removed books, even for purposes of letting a prospective reader know at which library the removed book can be found; Google is not planning to make a list of removed books available for public inspection and it need not say which books were left out.

For readers, inadequate guarantees of privacy protections could have a chilling effect on the willingness of users to read controversial materials, and consequently, may diminish the ability of authors of controversial books to earn money from them.

In what new ways will this agreement enable users to access books?

The agreement significantly expands access to millions of in-copyright books through Google Books.

Specifically, readers will be able to access books through:

• Preview — Allows users to freely preview a limited number of pages of in-copyright works to help users decide if the book is right for them to buy. Generally, out-of-print books will be available for preview, and in-print books will not unless the rights holder decides to activate previews through their participation in this settlement or through the Book Search Partner Program.
• Consumer Purchase — Offers individual users the ability to purchase access to view an entire in-copyright book online. The rights holder may set the price or allow the price to be set by a Google algorithm.
• Institutional Subscription — For academic, corporate, and government organizations. Gives members of the institution full access to in-copyright, out-of-print books.
• Free Public Library Access — Authorizes free, full-text, online viewing of in-copyright, out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries at no charge to the library or the reader, with added revenues to the rights holders through per page printing fees.
• Future Services — The agreement allows for other services and uses, such as Print-On-Demand, Consumer Subscription and others, to be agreed in the future.

If approved, the settlement would provide:

• More Access to Out-of-Print Books — Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online;
• Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books — Building off publishers’ and authors’ current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books;
• Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online — Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world’s most renowned libraries;
• Free Access From U.S. Libraries — Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and
• Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works — Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry. The Book Rights Registry will locate rights holders, collect and maintain accurate rights holder information, and provide a way for rights holders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

Conclusion

In the short run, the Google Book Search settlement will bring about much greater access to books collected by the major research libraries over the years. But it is very worrisome that this agreement, which was negotiated almost in secret by Google and a few attorneys working for the Authors Guild in America and AAP (who will, get up to $45.5 million in fees for their work on the settlement—more than all of the authors combined), will create two complementary monopolies with exclusive rights over a research corpus of such a magnitude.

The Book Search agreement is not really a settlement of a dispute over whether scanning books to index them is fair use. It is a major restructuring of the book industry’s future without much meaningful government oversight.

There were several developments and news items concerning electronic readers appearing over the past few weeks.

Amazon announced that on Christmas Day, for the first time ever, they sold more downloadable electronic books than physical ones. This is a company that started strictly as a seller of physical books, and is today one of the largest retail operations in the world (though now selling many other types of merchandise). Of course, Christmas Day is not exactly a typical sales day (who buys anything on Christmas?). Nevertheless, there is an important milestone here, a first likely to be repeated with increasing frequency in the days ahead. Meanwhile, Amazon also announced that their Kindle electronic reader is the most “gifted” item in their history. I will assume by “gifted” they mean more people gave Kindles as gifts than any other product, rather than that it is the most intelligent or talented product on the market, hence the launch of the iPad by Apple.

Samsung, the large electronics manufacturer, announced that they will be introducing four electronic readers this year. Two are scheduled to be released in March or April, the other two in July. These devices will not only allow for reading, but other functions such as note-taking. Samsung will be offering books from Google’s growing library of over one million electronic volumes.

That Samsung and others would enter this space should be of no great surprise. A few months back, Forrester Research upped its projections of sales of electronic readers for 2010 to 6 million, double its estimate for 2009. They had only just upped their 2009 projection by 50% from 2 to 3 million units when making that last prediction.

California recently passed a law mandating that any publisher selling textbooks to California universities make electronic versions available by the year 2020. Digital editions are likely to bring down the huge cost of textbooks today as well as making them much lighter and easier to carry around.  People entering University today are far more comfortable with electronic reading than those of us born at an earlier time. They have been reading things electronicallymost of their lives.

What do these and other stories about electronic readers portend for the business of printed books? In the January 4 issue of Newsweek, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was asked if he believes the printed book will eventually go away. His response was “I do.” He noted that the printed book has had an incredibly long run, over 500 years. If Gutenberg came back today, Bezos points out, he would still know exactly how to use the technology. That is an astonishing fact, as it is unlikely Alexander Graham Bell would know how to text on a cell phone, or Thomas Edison know how to operate an MP3 music player, though their inventions came 400 years later. Still, Bezos says, “no technology lasts forever,” and in his opinion, this one is coming to its end.

Is he right? Yes. Perhaps not quite so completely, but essentially, yes, electronic texts will replace books, newspapers, and other printed matter. Those who love books may protest. There is nothing like the touch and feel of a printed book. If you grew up with them, you may feel this way. Today’s generation harbors no such sentiment. They grew up in an electronic world and see no more point to reading from paper than in riding to the mall on a horse. I’m an avid newspaper reader – read one every morning with my coffee. I’ll be one of the remaining subscribers when my morning paper goes out of business in the next few years. My children never read them, unless they have an online edition.

That is not to say that print will totally die, as Bezos predicts. Even as tape has virtually disappeared, and CDs are dying, vinyl records are experiencing a resurgence. People like the tangible feel, the covers and liner notes, things not available with invisible, digital downloads. Vinyl sales are believed to have increased by as much as 50% in the last year. However, we need to put this in perspective. Their numbers went from a smaller fraction of 1% of sales to a larger fraction of 1% of sales. There may be a niche market, but records will never again dominate music sales. I believe the day is rapidly approaching when the same will be said for printed books.

The reason is not only that electronic text is more comfortable to younger readers, it also offers many advantages. It is more portable, less expensive, can contain links to all sorts of related information, can be updated or corrected instantly, can be quickly searched, and so on. The “books” that carry electronic text will soon also play music, provide access to the internet, view videos, send text messages and email, and make telephone calls. You can carry a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica around with you and it will never do any of these. The new technology works better, and therefore it will replace the old.

But, here is the piece de resistance. The New York Times asked Bezos what does he say to people who want to use their Kindle in a bathtub. Bezos replied that he already does. He puts it in a one-gallon Ziploc bag. You can’t do this with a printed book because you can’t turn the pages, but you can push the buttons which “turn” the pages on a Kindle through the plastic bag.  M-Edge will be introducing a waterproof case this spring that allows you to use your Kindle in a bathtub, swimming pool, or anyplace else wet. In 500 years, no one invented one of these for printed books. Older readers may not much care whether they can surf the internet or sms a message to their friends from a book, but reading in a bathtub or swimming pool may be just the feature that wins the older generation over to the new technology.

For schoolchildren it could mean the end of lugging heavy books to school every day, while for parents and schools it could mean big savings. Electronic books may soon be a common sight in the classroom as schools begin to experiment with them. The pitch is compelling – rather than having books for every subject, children just take a small, light e-Reader. They can then download books, type data into worksheets and even browse the web and email their work to teachers – all from their desks. With most electronic books able to store more than 150 traditional books, one device could hold every textbook you’ll ever need. The leading proponent of the move to ebooks in schools is Arnold Schwarzenegger. When California’s high-school pupils return after this year’s summer holidays, they will have access to online maths and science textbooks. “It’s nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form,” Governor Schwarzenegger said when he announced the scheme. “Basically, kids are feeling as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons. Textbooks are outdated.” Amazon has even created a special electronic book aimed at schools and university students and is working with several US universities to develop students’ ebooks.  There is also a wealth of texts and research journals available online which can be downloaded, often for free. The key to the success of the educational ebook market will be pricing – ebook versions will have to be cheaper than their paper counterparts. But with luck, the battle for the ebook will result in a price war. If it does become significantly cheaper to buy electronic textbooks,then the ebook really could replace the textbook.

The future of e-books is one of the most contentious subjects in technology at the moment, eBooks and eReaders mark the biggest revolution in the way we read since the introduction of Penguin paperbacks in the 1930s. Sales of eReaders are on the rise and most computers have yet to be able to offer long battery life and easy-reading. In fact, if anything is holding eReaders back it is not the threat from computers but instead from publishers: only as complicated problems surrounding software, piracy and price are resolved will common standards emerge and eReaders become a mainstream gadget in their own right.

Future commercial uses of ePaper, however, means that the technology will be around for years to come – bus stop timetables, photos and newspapers will all use forthcoming technologies.

Last week, Apple announced their entry to the burgeoning netbook market with the launch of the iPad. Just one of a handful of companies shipping slate tablet devices this year, Apple was touted as coming up with a “Kindle Killer.” While the jury is still out on the iPad’s ability to replace the typical eReader, the very thought must strike concern with Amazon and the other companies with readers on the market, or coming in short order.

Two news releases this week prove that Amazon is not resting on their laurels with their Kindle platform. On Wednesday, Engadget and other outlets reported the purchase of touch-screen startup TouchCo by Amazon, who plans to integrate them into their Kindle hardware division. Then today, Prime View International Chairman Scott Liu was said to promise the release of color, flexible, touchscreen displays this year. PVI is the owner of E Ink and manufacturers the E Ink Electronic Paper Displays used in the Kindle and many other eReaders.

A number of other companies announced new eReader display technologies at CES 2010. Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, Fujitsu, and Philips showed color screens, while LG Displays showed their flexible foil and Plastic Logic their flexible organic plastic displays, both of which are amazingly thin and produce clear, high-contrast text and images.

On the functionality front, Amazon introduced a software development kit for their Kindle eReaders. This kit allows software developers to build active content for the Kindle 2 and DX, and presumably, for future devices from Amazon. This kit is expected to be available for beta testing within the month, and some of the anticipated applications are interactive content for books and puzzle & game applications. However, Amazon has left the field wide open and is enthusiastically looking to see what the community develops with this tool.

The publishing and eBook world has been atwitter this last week with the growing battle between Amazon and the major publishing houses over pricing. This battle was apparently influenced heavily by the new content agreements between Apple and the publishers, giving them more control over the pricing of their content sold on iTunes or whatever other outlet Apple uses for the iPad. At issue, is the Amazon practice of selling new releases and best sellers for $9.99, which the publishers feel is too low. Apple has apparently agreed to sell the same content for between $11.99 and $14.99, allowing the publisher to dictate the actual selling price.

This is on the heels of the earlier decision by those same publishers to withhold publication of electronic editions of new releases for up to 7 months after the hardcover is released. Widely derided by the eBook enthusiast community, the publishers claim that eBooks are hurting their new release hardcover sales. They are using the movie industry as their model for their plan.

So what does all this mean for the Kindle, or even for the eReader industry in general? Analysts predict that the eReader/eBook market will expand significantly over the next year. DigiTimes estimates that over 9.3 million eReaders are expected to be sold in 2010, up from 3.82 million in 2009.

Overall, the industry is starting to mature, buyers are seeing prices starting to drop and advanced features becoming more common. People that have been holding off to see how the situation plays out are starting to make the decision to buy. Amazon announced that Kindle became the most gifted item in Amazon’s history during the 2009 holiday shopping season. On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. The train is just starting to get up to speed, and shows no sign of slowing down.

We will see even more readers released with touch and pen capabilities, wireless (Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth) connectivity, color screens, advanced applications and functions (calendars, email, web browsing, and multimedia).

Slate computers seem to be on the rise, but  that this is just the beginning for these. Tablet computing has been around for several years, but never seemed to take off. Will slates be better? While they have much more functionality.

Advanced smart phones, like the Apple iPhone already have eReader functionality, but many who have tried to use one to read a book complain that the screen is just too small to be able to read effectively.

We will see some segmentation in the market, with some readers being aimed at the normal consumer, while devices like the QUE proReader from Plastic Logic are clearly aimed at the business user. Similarly, the enTourage eDGe seems similarly suited for the education market. This trend will continue, with pricing and features geared to the needs of the particular market.

Getting back to the Kindle v the iPad war I think that the Amazon Kindle is going to die a slow death as a result of the rich media capabilities of the iPad as well as the full software-based keyboard.

Source: The Huffington Post

An Israeli hacker claims to have broken the copyright protection on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, a BBC report say.

The hack apparently allows the ebooks stored on the Kindle reader to be transferred as pdf files to virtually any other device. This seems to be the latest in a series of Digital Rights Management hacks, the most famous being the reverse engineering of iTunes.

DRM has long divided opinion. While rights holders regard it as a crucial tool to protect copyright, consumers tend to hate it because it limits what can be done with content.

“DRM is not an effective way of preventing copying nor is it a good way of making sales. There isn’t a customer out there saying ‘what I need is an electronic book that does less,” according to novelist and co-editor of the Boing Boing blog Cory Doctorow

Just when a new DRM system is active, hackers begin to try and break it. The first noteworthy DRM hack was when  Jon Lech Johansen, known as DVD Jon, cracked the copy protection on DVDs in 1999. He went on to break the copyright protection on iTunes, leading Apple to offer DRM-free music. DVD Jon now runs a company with an application to take the pain out of moving different types of content between devices.

The recent hacking of Amazon’s Kindle will certainly have alarm bells ringing within the publishing industry.

A review of e-books currently available for illicit download confirms that e-book piracy is no longer dominated by technical how-to e-books but includes best-selling authors Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, and James Patterson. PCWorld found that one-third of Publishers Weekly’s 2009 top 15 best-selling fiction books were available for illicit download through a growing variety of book-swapping sites, file-sharing services, and peer-to-peer networks.

Is the publishing industry following the music industry?, only time will tell….

Although Amazon didn’t release any hard numbers for sales of its latest generation Kindle DX, the e-reader has clearly had a transformative affect on the online company. Some industry observers think it could also transform the textbook industry, as well as revive a dying newspaper industry (although there is certainly a fair share of doubters). For other e-reader-makers, the most near-term effect of the Kindle is that it is simply killing the competition.

Most notably, its success could hurt Barnes & Noble, which has been fairly successful to date. The bookstore giant has had to stall plans for the retail release of its Kindle-competitor, the Nook e-reader. The device was slated to hit shelves yesterday, but was pushed back until Dec. 7, at which time it will be available in “very limited” quantities in its highest-volume stores. The company has had a hard time keeping up with demand for the device, a challenge that Amazon also faced in last year’s holiday rush.

In fact, this is the first year that Amazon hasn’t run out of Kindle stock. After the first Kindle sold out immediately in Nov. 2007, it took Amazon months to restock. Last December, it sold out again and supplies weren’t updated until the Kindle 2 came out the following February. But with inventory covered this year, Amazon is the clear winner in e-readers for the holiday season, thanks to its popularity, brand strength and — more than anything — availability.

Next year, it could be a different story, as the space gets more competitive. Both the Kindle and Nook are powered by AT&T, but other vendors and carriers are vying for a piece of this attractive market. Sony has released its own line of e-readers, also waning in supplies this holiday season, and Asus and PlasticLogic have promised to launch in 2010. Outside of dedicated devices, competition continues to mount from smartphones and e-reader applications, promising a similar experience on a smaller screen.

The growing spotlight on e-books coupled with shortages in supply will be good news for Amazon, as it captures the valuable holiday shopper crowd (6% of U.S. consumers plan to gift an e-reader this year, according to Goldman Sachs), but next year the stakes will only get higher. If 2009 was the year of the netbook, 2010 is poised to be all about e-books.

The current talk in publishing centers around the launch of Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader in Europe and other parts of the world and the effect that it will have on the book retail industry as we know it.

Amazon revolutionised bookselling in its short existence, probably in the same way in which Apple is changing the music retail industry. Is it about to do so yet again with the international debut of Kindle, which is seen by many as the “iPod” of the book market.

Originally launched in the US in November 2007, Amazon expects sales of Kindle to pass the 1 million mark by the end of this year. The wireless device — which must be bought through Amazon’s US website for the time being — will enable UK customers to download books in less than a minute using 3G technology.

Shoppers in Europe will have access to about 280,000 books as well as some international newspapers and magazines. However, on top of the $279 (£176) cost, UK consumers will pay more than their US counterparts in for books – $13.99 (£8.80) rather than $9.99 (£6.30) – as a result of Amazon’s higher operating costs outside its domestic market.

It remains to be seen what business model Amazon intends for the South African market but even more so, how the introduction of the Kindle in South Africa will impact on the historic territorial distribution rights of local publishers on the distribution of overseas books in South Africa.

Does the rise of ebooks and e-readers mean that bookshops will die in the long run?

The advent of e-readers is part of the emerging digital age and retailers need to reassess how they do business. To say it’s the end of the bookshop might be premature but it does put pressure on individual book retailers and they need to quickly adapt.

Books and Ereaders is good for publishers, authors, customers and retailers, it’s new and exciting, it’s convenient, it’s in line with trends and fashionable. It’s got the opportunity to drive new readers.” One in four people claim not to read a single book in a year, but the new technology may extend the category’s appeal.

Device wars

Kindle may be a proprietary Amazon product, but the giant will not necessarily have things all its own way. At present Kindle is seen to have an advantage because of its wireless technology. Users of other e-readers typically need to link to a PC to buy books. But Sony, for instance, has developed its own wireless e-reader, which is expected to debut in the US this December. As well as enabling users to buy books, it will allow them to “borrow” titles from libraries. Sony has also switched away from a proprietary format for ebooks and adopted the ePub open format, meaning shoppers can buy from a variety of sources to read on the devices.

More devices will be added to the market, which is why publishers and retailers will need to support the industry standard format for ebooks- ePub. By utilising the ePub format in e-readers, customers are given the freedom to choose which device they read their content on, and this will help authors and publishers reach as large a part of this rapidly expanding market as possible.

Kindle and similar devices will eat into physical book sales just a mp3′s ate CD’s, just as travel guides, are already being affected by digital technology – people now use their iPhone as a guide.

Market analyst Forrester has little doubt that e-readers are here to stay and expects such products to be a “breakout success” in the US over Christmas. It forecasts sales of 900,000 units in November and December and increased its expected sell-through this year from 2 million to 3 million units. “We expect sales in 2010 to double, bringing cumulative sales to 10 million by year-end 2010,” Forrester says.

The US Department of Justice came out of the ring and threw some destructive punches at Google this week. It’s uppercut on Google’s chin asserted that that the agreement could violate antitrust law.

As a result of this latest technical blow in the fight of the heavy weights, the hearing that was set for October 7 to approve the proposed settlement has now been postponed with the agreement of Google. The parties will try to put together a new settlement and have proposed November 9 as the date when they will all meet to discussion the adjusted terms.

Members of the Open Book Alliance, which vehemently opposed the settlement from their corner, are dancing in the ring. Member organizations include the likes of Amazon.com, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Microsoft, the National Writers Union, the New York Library Association and Yahoo — some of whom will, under usual circumstances, not spar in the same ring to avoid being seen together. In this case, however, they agreed and joined the fight.

This can be regarded as a huge victory for the many organizations that raised important and significant concerns that the settlement did not serve the public interest to its full, stifled innovation, and restricted competition.

What does this mean for the ordinary Joe Public? Well, it means that it may be a bit longer before Google e-book enthusiasts have full access to the vast array of books that are either out of print or unclaimed. Meanwhile, Joe Public will just have to make do with what he can buy through online booksellers like Amazon, or with several thousand older, public domain tomes available through sites like Project Gutenberg and who is cashing in, none other than Amazon.

Round one goes against Google, but, be aware the heavyweight is long away from throwing in the towel and might just Google its opposition slowly down its thirsty belly, which have room for more than one Amazon river.

The Centre for Democracy and Technology supports the Google Books settlement but in an Amicus Brief filed on Tuesday it called on the court to impose a couple of mandatory privacy requirements.

The Centre for Democracy and Technology sees the enormity of Google’s proposed position as well as anyone:

Google is in many ways taking on the role of the public library as a gateway to information, only on a much larger and more comprehensive scale. Providing such breadth of electronic access to so many published books will give Google an unparalleled view of people’s reading and information-seeking habits. By hosting the book search service and closely managing user access, Google will have the capability to collect data about individual users’ searches, preview pages visited, books purchased, and even time spent reading particular pages. … Google will hold a massive centralized repository of books and of information about how people access and read books online.

But the same goes for the world’s largest online Book distributor, Amazon.com. If Google is successful in pulling off the settlement it will not only be the world’s biggest library but also the dominant purveyor of search and behavioural advertising. What a combination!

In the absence of limitations placed on what Google can do with the data it collects about readers through the Google Book programme, Google would remain free to combine that data with other data that Google collects, thereby adding a crucial rich and personal dimension to the profiles of web surfers that Google already maintains about individuals’ searching and Web surfing habits. Reading habits add an intimate element to profiles that may already be attractive for a variety of uses

As valuable as the Google Book programme will be, without action by the Court to protect a reader’s privacy, they have the potential to transform the typical library experience from one of anonymity and privacy to one of data mining and tracking.

The Centre for Democracy and Technology called on the court to mandate and supervise a number of additional privacy requirements:

• Full disclosure. Google should prominently explain to users what personal information it collects, what content information it collects, why, how long it’s retained, technically how it’s collected, how users can opt out, how data is protected against theft.
• Limited data. Google should be allowed to collect only the data it needs to operate the program. The right to read anonymously must not be abridged.
• Hands off institutions. There’s no need for Google to authenticate individual users within a school or library.
• Annotations. Google should not be allowed annotations to be used for any purpose other than to provide the annotation feature or as users clearly consent. The fear is those annotations could provide sensitive personal information.
• User access. Users should be able to correct or delete information Google holds about them, including purchase histories, annotations and search history.

The list goes on and incorporates 12 privacy concerns. While getting the court to enforce all these privacy concerns would be vital, but is this enough?

We have to get “out of print” books online, that is a fact, but won’t it be better to create a consortium of libraries, not just outsource digital libraries to one company like Google?

As a legal, policy, and practical matter, readers have long enjoyed a high level of anonymity and privacy with respect to their reading habits, as one element of their broader – and constitutionally-based – interest in privacy over their personal information.

The Google book service represents a total change with respect to the treatment of access to material that has historically been held by libraries. Google is in many ways taking on the role of the public library as a gateway to information, only on a much larger and more comprehensive scale. Providing such breadth of electronic access to so many published books will give Google an unparalleled view of people’s reading and information-seeking habits. By hosting the book search service and closely managing user access, Google will have the capability to collect data about individual users’ searches, preview pages visited, books purchased, and even time spent reading particular pages. Whereas in the offline world such data collection is either impossible or widely distributed among disconnected libraries and bookstores, Google will hold a massive centralized repository of books and of information about how people access and read books online. Furthermore, Google is likely to be the only comprehensive source for digitized out-of print books.

Online search giant Google said it will remove all European books that are still commercially available from a $125 million U.S. settlement with publishers to scan orphaned and out-of-print books in the US and sell them online.

The concessions come given the pressure from European authors and publishers, who don’t want the Google search engine to scan books by European authors, which are still protected by copyright, without asking their permission.

This fresh position means books that are no longer available to US consumers but are still on sale in Europe will not be included in Google’s scanned catalogues, unless of course the author expressly request inclusion.

Previously, European rights holders whose books were already out of print, or had never been published in the US were considered to have opted in to the settlement.

It’s a step in the right direction, [but] it’s not enough, what about South African authors?

To alleviate European concerns, Google has promised to have 2 non-U.S. representatives on the governing board of the Books Rights Registry, which is being set up to govern the settlement.

Google felt the need to clarify its European position following complaints, from German publishers who were concerned that their works were being illegally scanned in the US.

According to Google a lot of the European concerns had been already addressed in the US settlement and especially the emphasis on rights holder control should put minds at ease.

James Click, one of the authors who had initially sued Google in a class action suit said that the US. settlement was good for writers, as authors of out-of-print books “always retains total control” over the work and can through Google books create a market for a book which was already disregarded by the publishers.

Beyond worries about authors rights many Europeans worry that the US deal leaves them behind on a new way to reach readers.

“Copyright is now a barrier to a commercial and academic activity,” said Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group, a lobby group championing civil liberties online. Europe is lagging behind the US which is a serious concern, he added.

Without a pan-European licensing model some European authors won’t get to benefit from the online push at all, Killock said.

Due to fragmented European copyright laws, a similar Europe wide publishing deal for orphan books would be impossible, the European Commission, Europe’s executive arm, concedes. Being aware of the problem it is currently driving for change in the laws to facilitate digitalization of books in Europe. Books are orphaned if they are still protected under copyright, but the rights holder is near impossible to identify.

Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding and Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said Europe needs to adapt its fragmented copyright legislation to create a legal framework which “paves the way for a rapid roll out of services, similar to those made possible in the U.S. by the recent settlement, to European consumers,” the commission said.

Orphan works and out-of-print works represent around 90% of European libraries’ collections. “These books must be recovered and given a new lease of life,” the commissioners said.