Google said Monday he will ask permission from the copyright holders of European books still marketed in their country of origin, but which were discontinued in the United States to offer a digital copy in its Google Books service.
The U.S. search engine defended before the European Commission (EC) its pattern of digitizing books, which has drawn harsh criticism from countries like Germany, which fears not referring to the authors for their distribution, and has generated mistrust among publishers and authors Europeans who warn that the company could create a monopoly.
The Commission today launched an informational hearing to which he invited responsible for Google as well as cultural institutions, holders of copyright, companies in the fields of information technology and consumer associations to address book digitization in the EU.
The director of engineering for Google Books, Daniel Clancy, told a news conference that the project developed in the U.S. "democratizing access to information" and contributes to our cultural heritage "is not left behind".
Clancy claimed to have a "vision" system that could be implanted in the EU, while acknowledging that a harmonization of the rights at European level would facilitate things. "
During the hearing, Google told the Commission the agreement reached with U.S. authors and publishers to allow holders of the copyright receiving 63 per cent of the profits which his works generated in Google Books Search.
Clancy, tomorrow hold a meeting with European Commissioner for Information Society, Viviane Reding, said that Google Books instead wants the authors to "control" of their work and profit from them with digitization.
"One supplier is better than none and have many suppliers is better than having one," he said, referring to competition in the sector.
Faced with the reluctance of Europeans to the project, said the titles by authors from the EU still available in bookshops in the country of origin, but discontinued in the United States will not be available on Google Books to unless negotiated digitization with the owners of their rights.
He added that the company sent this weekend to major publishers in the EU a letter that assured them of its intention to include European representatives in the management of the register of books available at Google Books.
The head of Google for agreements on books in Europe, Santiago de la Mora, said the introduction of the model of Google Books in the EU, "as is, it is impossible" because "is rooted in a negotiation process in the U.S." , noting that it is for Europeans to decide how they want to carry out the digitization of its volumes.
Commissioner Reding and his counterpart in the Internal Market, Charlie McCreevy, advocated in a statement to create a new EU legal framework allowing the development of book scanning projects.
To cope with this "Herculean" task, the commissioners expressed their welcome to agreements between the public and private sector provided they comply "fully" intellectual property laws, to "ensure a fair return" to the authors.
Both felt that Reding as McCreevy European legislators must create a regulatory framework to pave the way for rapid deployment of these services, "similar" to the recent agreement reached by Google has made it possible in America.
Brussels aims to analyze different proposals to accelerate the digitization of complete works discontinued or "orphan", those subject to copyright but whose author can not be identified, which together represent 90 percent of the funds of the national libraries of the EU.
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