MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
April 29 – May 7, 2009 Edition

BA Warns Rightsholders
Over Google Settlement

LONDON/Authorlink News/04/30/09–The Booksellers Association Monday called for UK publishers to prevent Google from commercially exploiting their titles online until it is clearer how the digital market will develop, according to a story by Graeme Neill in The Bookseller. The BA has also repeated its warning that the settlement between Google and the US Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers results in Google being “handed a monopoly”, with competitors “placed at a considerable disadvantage”.

In a letter to The Bookseller, BA chief executive Tim Godfray, said: “This might be an agreement signed by US publishers, US authors and Google, but it will affect almost all of us in the UK book trade.” Under the terms of the settlement UK publishers can claim titles already scanned in by Google, and then ask the search engine to remove access to them. Access can be restored further down the line.

Godfray said that UK booksellers could be hit because downloading scanned books from Google’s website would be easier than importing them from overseas. Read the full

Bookseller story.