Ottawa (ECN) - The changes to the agreement between Google Books and the American publishers will be "minor" with "some improvements", said David Drummond, Director of Development and Legal Affairs for Google, in an interview with La Tribune.
A hearing before the U.S. court is scheduled November 9. moved from October 7 in New York.
For the Authors Guild (American club of authors) and the Association of American Publishers (publishers of club), signed the MoU with Google Books dating from October 2008 wanted to reshape the agreement with the Internet Group that lends to controversy.
With the Book Fair in Frankfurt that opened its doors yesterday, Google Books has created a sensation by announcing the launch of Google Edition, his bookshop electronic means for business.
"We're thinking about how to make the agreement more palatable, said, David Drummond, director of development and legal affairs for Google. "We can not give any details but we are working on the objections and suggestions raised by publishers and we hope to integrate our advanced in the amended our agreement must be submitted to the judge on November 9th."
After three years of proceedings between Google and publishers, a first agreement was concluded in October 2008 in the United States providing for revenue sharing - 37% for Google and 63% for dependents - on sales of works carried out from Google Books.
The American search engine, which has scanned 10 million pounds since the end of 2004, had even planned in the agreement to pay 125 million dollars in compensation to authors whose works were scanned without their consent.
But in mid-September, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the court to reject the compromise in its present form" and encourage the parties to continue negotiations to be in accord with the antitrust laws and on copyright. Google really tries to get the law and the exclusive online reference books no longer published. But the 1998 agreement did not provide anything special for the European publishers and authors who identify Yet some 150 000 books in French in American libraries.
"In Europe we have always understood that we needed to work directly with publishers," said David Drummond today. "Our idea is not to import a U.S. model in Europe, but to build a model that works with authors and publishers in Europe. We want to sit at a table and discuss copyright with the persons concerned to find the necessary arrangements"
Given the appetite of Google Books, the government called the French publishers to organize the market for digital publishing and electronic books.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com will begin marketing its e-book reader Kindle in Europe October 19 (especially France) but with very little digital Franco-French. The hour of the gathering of the French edition has it come?
