Google and US authors and publishers submitted a revised settlement to a US judge on Friday seeking approval of an agreement that would clear the way for millions of books to be sold online.
The modified settlement, which runs nearly 370 pages, seeks to address copyright and antitrust objections raised by the Department of Justice and others to the original version of the complicated legal agreement.
Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers reached the settlement last year to a copyright infringement suit they filed against the Mountain View, California, company in 2005.
Under the settlement, Google agreed to pay US$125 million to resolve outstanding claims and establish an independent “Book Rights Registry,” which would provide revenue from sales and advertising to authors and publishers who agree to digitize their books.
The Justice Department said the book-scanning project “has the potential to breathe life into millions of works that are now effectively off limits” but objected to the original settlement on copyright and antitrust grounds.
One of its concerns was that the settlement, as originally drafted, would give Google sole authority over so-called “orphan works” — out-of-print books whose copyright holders cannot be found — and books by foreign rights holders.
The department recommended providing additional protections for unknown rights holders and addressing the concerns of foreign authors and publishers.
It also proposed setting up a mechanism by which Google’s competitors can gain comparable access to book collections.
The revised settlement narrows the definition of books covered under the settlement to those registered with the US Copyright Office by Jan. 5 or published in Australia, Britain, Canada or the US.
It also sets up an independent body, or fiduciary, which will be responsible for the interests of the rights holders of “orphan works.”
Unclaimed proceeds from orphan works would be used to try to locate rights holders and be held for at least 10 years before being distributed to “literacy-based charities in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia.”
Rival technology companies, privacy advocates, consumer watchdog groups and the French and German governments are among those who filed objections to the original settlement with the US District Court in New York hearing the case.
The revised settlement was denounced by the Open Book Alliance, a group which includes Google rivals Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon, the online retail giant which offers 360,000 books for sale for its Kindle electronic reader.
“Our initial review of the new proposal tells us that Google and its partners are performing a sleight of hand; fundamentally, this settlement remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners,” Open Book Alliance co-chair Peter Brantley said.
“None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest,” he said in a statement.
Brantley said Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers were “attempting to distract people from their continued efforts to establish a monopoly over digital content access and distribution.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained