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Google has one month to renegotiate the agreement on U.S. eBooks

* We have rejected the current terms of the agreement.
* Google should provide an approach that eliminates the concerns expressed by the authorities
U.S..

Google has just over a month to change the terms of the agreement with U.S. authors and publishers to capture the digital rights to millions of books and offer them via the Internet.

During a court hearing in New York, Federal Judge Denny Chin called on both sides to present the 9th of November a revised agreement on the pact in October 2008 between Google and two groups of authors and U.S. publishers.

The agreement creates significant legal concerns

Both parties then closed a deal of 125 million dollars (85.1 million euros) that Google is doing with the digital rights to millions of works to be able to offer through Internet e-book formats and audio-books and reciprocated by publishers and authors to 63% of the profits from it.

This agreement, widely criticized from different sectors of industry, was brought to court last month by the U.S. Justice Department, along with officials from five states, since it would violate antitrust law.

According to the Department of Justice, the agreement "creates significant legal concerns, including the fact that Google is profiting from the digitization of print books and their authors have not claimed rights over a period of five years.

Last September, five organizations representing publishers, libraries, and European authors filed a similar complaint to the European Commission.

At the hearing this week, Judge Chin rejected the current terms of the agreement and asked to renegotiate so that the removal of the concerns expressed by U.S. officials, something that both parties relied on to achieve for the hearing on 9 November.


Personal Opinion: It is logical that the negotiation is complicated because so much money at stake. As Justice Dept. says, Google wants to make money even with the print books in the public domain or will have to see how we have addressed that.

What I'm sure of is that at the end Google will digitize these books because he knows that will bring many benefits.