Ursula Le Guin fights Google to retain copyright control

27 January 2010

John Howell

Ursula K. Le Guin, a science fiction and fantasy writer most famous for her Earthsea trilogy, The left hand of darkness and The dispossessed, is taking on Google’s right to scan and sell millions of books online after the search engine giant reached an agreement with the US Authors Guild. According to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, Ursula Le Guin has submitted a petition to a US judge signed by 365 other writers opposing the legal settlement. The petition asks the judge to exempt the US from a revised legal settlement reached between Google and US authors and publishers.

Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers reached a settlement last year to a copyright infringement suit they filed against Google in 2005. Google agreed to pay $US125 million to resolve outstanding claims and establish an independent Book Rights Registry, which would provide revenue from sales and advertising to authors and publishers who agree to digitise their books. The Books Rights Registry would oversee payments for authors arising from Google's use of the works, and would also have the right to license the digital library to commercial or private entities. A copyright holder's works will be covered by the agreement unless they choose to "opt out "of it and will also cover out-of-print books and "orphaned works," books that are known to be copyrighted where the owner of the copyright cannot be identified.

The recent revised deal narrowed the definition of books to those registered with the US Copyright Office by January 5, 2009, or published in Australia, Britain, Canada or the US (Germany and France objected and were exempted).

Le Guin said the settlement was negotiated by the Authors Guild "without consultation with any other group of authors or American authors as a whole". She added that "The guild cannot, and does not, speak for all American writers”.

Removing the US from the settlement as Le Guin asks would effectively kill the agreement. Earlier Le Guin resigned her 40-year membership in the Authors’ Guild because of their support of Google’s plan.

“You decided to deal with the devil, as it were, and have presented your arguments for doing so,” she wrote earlier .“I wish I could accept them. I can’t...There are principles involved, above all the whole concept of copyright, and these you have seen fit to abandon to a corporation, on their terms, without a struggle.”

The leaders of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFFWA), the National Writers Union (NWU) and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) wrote to more than 60 authors in Congress to urge them to protest the Google deal.

“As fellow authors, you know the freedom to negotiate your own book contract is basic and precious. We hope you will join us in speaking in opposition to the amended settlement,” they wrote. “It isn’t fair. There are millions of book authors in this country who could be locked into an agreement they don’t understand and didn’t ask for.”