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Thursday, September 10, 2009

It is time for Europe to turn over a new e-leaf on digital books and copyright

On the occasion of this week's Google Books meetings in Brussels, Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, and Charlie McCreevy, Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, today made a joint statement setting out the important cultural and economic stakes of book digitisation in Europe. o face the daunting task of digitising Europe's books, of which there are tens of millions in Europe's national libraries alone, the two Commissioners stressed the need for fully respecting copyright rules to ensure fair remuneration for authors, but also welcomed public-private partnerships as a means to boost digitisation of books. They highlighted the need to adapt Europe's still very fragmented copyright legislation to the digital age, in particular with regard to orphan and out-of-print works. The statement of the two Commissioners comes ahead of a series of workshops and meetings between the Commission, cultural institutions, right holders, IT companies and consumer organisations, which start today with an information hearing on the US class action settlement on Google Book Search. Under this settlement, agreed between Google, authors and publishers in the United States (which still requires validation by a US court), authors could receive 63% of the online revenue generated by Google with digitised books. As of today, no equivalent solution is available in the EU. This week's hearings and meetings at the Commission will help develop a European response to the challenges of books digitisation. Both Commissioners believe that the challenge for EU policymakers is to ensure a regulatory framework which paves the way for a rapid roll-out of services, similar to those made possible in the United Sates by the recent settlement, to European consumers and to the European library and research communities. Following this week's meetings, the Commission will report back and share its preliminary findings with the European Parliament and the Council.
Following requests of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, the Commission is organising today and tomorrow meetings on the digitisation of books in Europe against the background of the Google Book Search settlement in the US. Today, an information hearing for stakeholders on the Google Book Search settlement is being held by the Commission's Directorate-General MARKT to collect, following a request of the Competitiveness Council, the requisite facts and figures to comply with this mandate. Tomorrow, Commissioner Reding will receive, at their request, representatives of libraries, publishers, consumer associations and Google.

The Google Book Search agreement, concluded on 28 October 2008, attempts to settle a lawsuit brought, as a class action, by US authors and publishers against Google, claiming that Google violated their copyright by digitising their books and making parts of them available through Google Book Search. As part of the settlement (which is limited to the US territory and still has to be approved by a US court), Google will compensate right holders whose works were scanned. It will also pay right holders 63% of revenues earned from the commercial uses Google makes of the books, and pay for the creation of a Book Rights Registry.

The Commission supports the digitisation and online accessibility of Europe's cultural heritage through Europeana , the European digital library, through which 4.6 million digitised books, maps, photographs, film clips and newspapers can be accessed today. On 9 July, Commissioner Reding called for a modern set of rules to encourage the digitisation of books in Europe ( SPEECH/09/336 ). On 28 August, the European Commission launched a public consultation on this issue, which is open until 15 November ( IP/09/1257 ).

Source  "Press Room - European Commission"

More information  "Press Room - European Commission"

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