Foreign Literature in the Digital Age: Part One

Although Google Books has recently been slapped with a hefty $125 million fine during a civil suit for having scanned snippets of thousands of copyrighted texts into its database without permission, its concept is causing tension especially amidst the European author and publishing community. The settlement doesn’t currently apply to Europe, but European publishers such as those affiliated with the U.K. Publishers’ Association and the European Booksellers Federation have been working on agreements with Google Books. The settlement could potentially have huge implications for the significant number of foreign authors and publishers that own U.S. copyrights and would therefore be subject to it, but could also be the source of further complications because of a lack of knowledge of U.S. copyright and class-action law (class-action law doesn’t even exist in Europe). The talks also involve including a non-U.S. representative on the board of the Book Rights Registry (yay!) as well as clearing up the definition of “commercially available” books from outside the U.S. This last part seems particularly troubling to me. In October of 2009, Google Books said that they had digitized over ten million books, but we haven’t yet decided what is “commercially available,” nor do we have a grasp on what is and is not in the American and European public domains?

Not to mention that more European uneasiness is coming to the surface about Google Books because of European hearings set to start in September of this year. The concept of the (American) digitization of books still poses some problems for Europeans. In 2005, French National Librarian Jean-Noel Jeanneney wrote a Le Monde editorial warning Europeans that Google Books presented “a risk of crushing domination by America in defining the idea that future generations have of the world.” Yikes. Many EU officials and European library associates don’t believe that Google needs to be involved in the digitization of European texts, but European copyright laws are in need of a modern face-lift to facilitate book searching. In the Publisher’s Weekly article that I based this post off of, one British publisher noted that 90% of books in Europe’s national libraries are either out of print or are orphan works. I’m sorry, what? 90%? You must be joking. Although I’m definitely not advocating Google Books as being the premier source of American knowledge of European texts, I think it can definitely offer some global solutions for making sure that foreign texts are not lost in the translation of moving from the print age to the digital age, as well as guaranteeing that foreign authors see some $$ in the piggy bank for their works. In the meantime though, there is going to have to be some serious dialogue and negotiations between American and European digitation initiatives so that we focus on the goal in mind and don’t get caught up in settlement agreements.