EC to hold Google book deal hearing in September

The European Commission is to hold a hearing on Google's online book publishing plans in September.

The European Commission (EC) has set a September 7th date for a hearing for interested parties to discuss Google's book publishing plans.

Various issues will be examined, although the possible impacts of the deal on European authors and copyright holders will be top of the agenda.

Google has reached a $125 million (£75 million) deal with publishers in the United States to create an online Book Rights Registry.

Under the commercial agreements, authors and publishers can register their works and receive royalties from subscriptions or book sales.

But officials in Germany argued that Google has also been digitising books written by European Union (EU) authors without their consent and including them in its database.

The deal was originally reached with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers last October.

Germany called on the EU to examine the intellectual property issue, receiving support from France and the UK.

In a paper submitted to the EU, the officials said: "Google's actions are irreconcilable with the principles of European copyright law."

Google said it was happy to discuss the issue of copyright in relation to the digital publication of books with European copyright.

The European Commission has therefore scheduled a hearing and invited publishers and authors to submit their views.

EU spokesman Oliver Drewes told the Associated Press that the aim of the hearing is to "draw provisional conclusions on Google's book scanning settlement".

Earlier this year, it was reported that a number of bestselling authors, including Harry Potter writer JK Rowling, were fighting to have copies of their books removed from a website in the United States.

They claimed that unauthorised downloads of their latest works were being hosted on the social publishing site Scribd.com.