Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-26-Speech-4-066"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20091126.4.4-066"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Madam President, I would like to thank the Committee on Legal Affairs for raising these questions. You raised so many big and fundamental questions which definitely need to be discussed in the coming months. This issue is definitely intensive, interesting, exciting and very future-oriented. I will first of all give an overview concerning this concrete question.
Second, publishers from EU Member States – apart from the United Kingdom – will now no longer participate in a major transformation of the book market. The Google Books Project in the United States will receive a major thrust forward, with no European publishers any longer a part of it. Even though services negotiated under this settlement will only be available to United States users, this absence could be detrimental to cultural diversity.
In this regard, the Commission has been calling, and will repeatedly call, on Member States: firstly, to intensify their digitisation policies; secondly, to explore the possibilities for public-private partnerships for digitisation; and, thirdly, to ensure that all digitised material becomes available through Europeana. If Member States do that, the Google Books settlement may turn out to be the catalyst, not a threat, for Europe’s initiatives in the area of access to digitised culture.
This brings me to your second question. The debate on the Google Books settlement has shown that Europe cannot afford to be left behind on the digital frontier. Europe has to act swiftly. To this end, the Commission is fully committed to working on a copyright framework that will facilitate large-scale digitisation of European library collections.
We believe that copyright rules have to be flexible enough in order not to overly complicate the creation of online libraries.
First of all: the Google Books Project. In essence, it is an initiative aimed at providing a tool to find, search and buy books for a wide audience of users. For rights holders, it may represent an additional channel of trade, and so an additional source of revenue. Let me add that in Europe, the Google Books Project is deployed in collaboration with libraries and concerns only public domain books. In-copyright books are only included in the Project by way of the Google Partner Programme addressed to publishers willing to conclude agreements with Google.
The Google Books class action settlement concerns the Google Books Project in the United States and aims to conclude a litigation procedure which has been going on for over four years. If approved, it will provide an additional source of revenue for rights holders but also, and most importantly, make the hitherto unavailable out-of-print and orphan works available for online search and access to US users. Moreover, its financial incentives may bring rights holders of orphan works out of the shadows.
Now, when it comes to the Google Book Search Project, the Commission sees the Google initiative as a demonstration that new business models are evolving to provide almost instant access to vast numbers of works to an increasing number of consumers. Because the European Commission favours the digitisation of books in European libraries and beyond, and because digitisation of books is a task of Herculean proportions, where private sector support is needed, the Commission favours initiatives such as Google’s Book Search Project as long as they respect intellectual property rights and do not lead to the distortion of competition.
When it comes to the Google Books settlement, the Commission has been actively engaged in consultations with European publishers and with Google. In September 2009, the Commission organised a public hearing bringing together European stakeholders and the settlement parties to exchange views and seek clarification on the various elements of the agreement.
But meanwhile, important changes have occurred. Due to numerous objections raised about the initial settlement by Google’s competitors, foreign governments (France and Germany) and the US Department of Justice, the terms of the settlement were revised and these revisions were submitted to the US Court on 13 November 2009.
First, the revised settlement has been significantly narrowed in scope. Now, only books either registered with the US Copyright Office or published in the United Kingdom, Australia or Canada by 5 January 2009 are covered by the settlement. All other books are outside the scope of the settlement. Consequently, only United States, United Kingdom, Australian and Canadian authors and publishers will, in future, be represented on the board of the Books Rights Registry, the body that administers the terms of the settlement.
Secondly, publishers from countries other than the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada will now have to negotiate individually to become part of Google Books services in the United States.
The new version of the settlement gives rise to two remarks. First, being outside the settlement is not always an advantage. When you are out, you can no longer control what Google does with the copies they have scanned up to now."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples