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Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.
Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive.
They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle told BBC News.
"If this deal goes ahead, they're making a real shot at being 'the' library and the only library."
Back in 2008, the search giant reached an agreement with publishers and authors to settle two lawsuits that charged the company with copyright infringement for the unauthorised scanning of books.
In that settlement, Google agreed to pay $125m (£76m) to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive compensation. Authors and publishers would get 70% from the sale of these books with Google keeping the remaining 30%.
Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923. Comments on the deal have to be lodged by September 4th. In early October, a judge in the Southern district of New York will consider whether or not to approve the class-action suit. In a separate development, the US Department of Justice is conducting an anti-trust investigation into the impact of the agreement.
'Open access'
Critics have claimed the settlement will transform the future of the book industry and of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books. The Internet Archive scans around 1000 books a day at 30 cents a page
"The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways - all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach," warned Mr Kahle. source: bbc.com