Google wins preliminary approval of online books settlement

Google, the authors and publishers revised an earlier settlement to limit the Internet company to books published in the U.S., the UK, Australia and Canada. Several nations including France and Germany objected to the reach of the earlier deal, which would have covered millions of out-of-print books published around the world. Under the US$125 million agreement, Google will set up a Book Rights Registry with publishers and authors to compensate copyright holders whose works are scanned. It also would seek to identify and compensate the rights holders of so-called orphan works whose owners aren't currently known.

The Open Book Alliance, which includes online retailer Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., has opposed the settlement. Amazon and Microsoft, the world's largest software company, have said they would like to enter the online book-publishing business too.

“This is not a surprising development and is not any indication that the court will or will not accept the terms of Settlement 2.0,” the alliance said in an e-mailed statement Thursday.

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