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NEW YORK : Google traded arguments with opponents and supporters of its digital book project in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday as the judge hearing the case pressed the Internet giant to defend the venture.
US District Court Judge Denny Chin made it clear from the outset of the day-long hearing he would not immediately rule on Google's agreement with US authors and publishers that would allow it to offer millions of books online.
"To end the suspense, I am not going to rule today. There is just too much to digest," Chin said, reassuring lawyers for both sides he had an "open mind."
Those speaking against the deal outnumbered supporters by about four to one, with the judge allowing each of the roughly two dozen individuals and groups who are not actual parties to the case five minutes to state their positions.
Google and supporters of the project argued that the proposed digital library and electronic bookstore would make millions of out-of-print books available and provide a new avenue for authors to profit from their works.
Opponents of the agreement urged the judge to reject it on the grounds that it raises anti-trust, privacy and copyright issues, while also granting sole rights to Google to digitize millions of out-of-print works whose authors cannot be traced.
Others criticized the settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for including books unless an author expressly opts out of the deal.
The agreement resulted from a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Authors Guild and AAP charging Google with copyright infringement.
Under the settlement, Google agreed to pay 125 million dollars to resolve outstanding claims and establish an independent "Book Rights Registry," which would provide a majority of sales and ad revenue to authors and publishers.
Chin asked Daralyn Durie, a counsel for Google -- whose motto is "Don't be evil" -- whether she considered copyright infringement to be "evil."
Durie responded that Google's book project would compensate authors and provide otherwise unobtainable revenue to many whose works are no longer printed.
"There is no other way to create a market for these out-of-print works," she said. "In the absence of this settlement, there is no way to access these works. They are locked away."
The Justice Department has expressed copyright concerns about the agreement, the opt-out clause and a lack of clarity about Google's future business plans.
"What we have before us today is a series of forward-looking commercial transactions," Justice Department lawyer William Cavanaugh said, an argument which the judge himself pressed Google about.
"Speculative harms are not a sufficient basis to reject a settlement," Durie replied.
Center for Democracy and Technology counsel John Morris said despite privacy concerns, the settlement offered "extraordinary benefits to our society."
National Federation of the Blind president Marc Maurer told the court his group "strongly supports" the proposed settlement. "Google will give us access to 10 million books," he added.
Dozens of visually-impaired people were in the audience that spilled from the courtroom into an overflow area.
Opponents argued that letting Google amass a digital collection of the world's books would threaten readers' privacy and provided the firm an added advantage in an Internet search market it already dominates.
"It will have a significantly negative impact on competition in the search market," said Microsoft counsel Tom Rubin.
Google has dismissed the objections of Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo! and other rivals as "sour grapes" and said nothing was stopping them from digitizing books on their own.
Online rights groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center each argued that the proposed settlement was a threat to people's privacy because Google would be able to track what they read.
"This settlement would create a library-book store with an unprecedented ability to track users reading habits," said EFF attorney Cindy Cohn. "Google has said we should just trust them."
Google's Durie said the company has "a privacy policy in place."
- AFP/vm
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