Last month, a Shanghai novelist named Mian Mian became the first Chinese author to sue Google for copyright infringement over its book scanning project, catching the attention of other writers. On Monday, Google agreed to supply a list of works by Chinese authors it has digitized. Google also sent a letter of apology to the China Writers’ Association, an organization that represents about 8,000 authors, for inadequate communication.
A spokesperson for Google, Courtney Hohne, said, “In China like everywhere else, if a book is in copyright we don’t show more than a few snippets of text without the explicit permission of the rights holder. In addition, we have a longstanding policy of honoring authors’ wishes, and authors or publishers who wish to exclude their book may do so at any time.” Hohne also told The New York Times that more than 50 Chinese publishers had agreed to allow their books to be included in the digitization project.
Daily Finance reports further:
“Google is willing to apologize to Chinese writers for its conduct,” wrote Erik Hartmann, who runs the Asia-Pacific division of Google Books, in a letter to the China Writers’ Association. “We hope the dispute with Chinese writers can be settled successfully,” in the second quarter of 2010, he said.
“We definitely agree that we haven’t done a sufficient job in communicating with Chinese writers,” Hartmann added.
(These developments are seemingly unrelated to the company’s announcement on Tuesday about changes to its search engine within China via Google.cn.)
Yesterday, Google faced more copyright issues elsewhere. If the company doesn’t change the terms of its book scanning project in France, the French government will discontinue a partnership that allows Google to digitize their national library. Cultural minister Frédéric Mitterrand insists that Google drop its exclusivity clauses, which can last as long as 25 years.
Late last month as we reported, Google was found in violation of French copyright law by a Paris court for scanning works from La Martiniere into its Book Search without the publisher’s consent.
Furthermore, Digital Journal reports that France’s Cultural Ministry, “concerned about the fate of publishing and media companies losing money because of online content distribution, is considering the introduction of a tax on the advertising revenue generated by Internet companies.” It is being dubbed the “Google tax” by some media outlets.
Here in the U.S., Google is facing potential legal action from an author’s family on a topic not related to the Book Search project. The family of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick is claiming infringement of intellectual property rights over the company’s new Nexus One smartphone. His daughter, Isa Dick Hackett, says that the names of many of the phone’s features are taken from her late father’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which the film Blade Runner was based.
She told the Daily Telegraph:
“Google takes first and then deals with the fallout later,” she said. ““In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel. People don’t get it. It’s the principle of it. It would be nice to have a dialogue. We are open to it. That’s a way to start.”
Dick Hackett further asserts that Google is in trademark violation by using the word “Nexus.” The androids in her father’s book are called “Nexus 6″ models. Google insists that the phone’s name was not inspired by Dick’s novel, but instead by the original definition of the word, “a place where things converge.” Dick Hackett sent a cease and desist letter to Google last week, but the family does not actually hold a trademark for the name.
