Brussels began a campaign to overhaul copyright law in the European Union

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Brussels tries to fight Google book plan by overhauling EU copyright law

Contentious plan to digitise world's libraries has made revamp of authors' rights necessary, commissioners say



Google has digitised more than 10m books including those in the Bodleian library, Oxford Photograph: John Downing / Rex Features

Brussels began a campaign today to overhaul copyright law in the European Union's 27 countries, partly in response to Google's controversial plan to digitise the world's leading libraries. Viviane Reding and Charlie McCreevy, the European commissioners for media and the single market, launched their campaign to standardise authors' rights amid fears that Google's ambitious project will leave Europe floundering behind the US in the digital learning stakes.

"A better understanding of the interests involved will help the commission to define a truly European solution in the interest of European consumers," the Luxembourgeoise and Irish commissioners said. The EU kicked off a round of hearings today on the Google project, which is being challenged by the German and French governments and opposed by leading publishers in Europe and the US.

While Google is awaiting a court ruling next month on its $125m (£77m) settlement with US authors and publishers on its book-scanning project, the situation in Europe is confused because there are 27 different national copyright regimes in the EU.

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Brussels tries to fight Google book plan by overhauling EU copyright law | Business | guardian.co.uk

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Making concessions to European publishers, online-search giant Google Inc. Monday said it will remove all European books that are still commercially available from its $125 million program to scan orphaned and out-of-print books in the U.S. and sell them online.

In the U.S., Google has reached a settlement with publishers that will allow it to scan and post online all out-of-copyright and out-of-print books, for which owners are hard to identify. Due to complex copyright rules, the U.S settlement will only apply to users in that country.

Previously, European rights holders whose books were out of print, or had never been published in the U.S., were considered to have opted for the scanning process, said Anne Bergman of the Federation of European Publishers.

"It's a step in the right direction, [but] it's not enough for our members to sleep peacefully," said Jessica Saenger of the German booksellers association.

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Google Curtails Europe Book Plan - WSJ.com