EU to examine Google book plans

The EU is to investigate Google's plans to make millions of books available online.

Google's plans to make millions of books available online are to be examined by the European Union (EU) following claims that they breach copyright law.

The European Commission will look into how the commercial agreements reached between the search engine and authors in the United States will affect the rights of those in the EU.

Under the deal, Google will publish extracts of books that are protected by copyright. It will also digitise full works in cases where copyright protection has expired.

But officials in Germany argue that Google has also scanned books written by EU authors without their consent for inclusion in the Google Books database.

They have appealed to the EU requesting that the intellectual property issue be examined - a call that is supported by France and the UK.

"Google's actions are irreconcilable with the principles of European copyright law, according to which the consent of the author must be obtained before his or her works may be reproduced or made publicly available on the internet," the paper states.

Vladimir Tosovsky, industry minister for the Czech EU presidency, said during a news conference: "The commission will carefully study the whole issue and, if need be, take steps."

Google has insisted it is happy to discuss the issue of copyright in relation to the digital publication of books with European rights holders.

Meanwhile, the Publishers Association has claimed that its new anti-piracy tool has helped to record around 800 texts that have been illegally uploaded onto the web without consent or payment, of which 90 per cent have been removed.

The organisation stated that as the tool evolves it will play a significant role in the fight against copyright infringement on the internet, the Bookseller reports.