As Google Books battle draws on, Amazon makes its case

Online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. is warning a federal judge that Internet search leader Google Inc. will be able to gouge consumers and stifle competition if it wins court approval to add millions more titles to its already vast digital library.

The harsh critique of Google’s 10-month-old settlement with U.S. authors and publishers emerged this week in a 41-page brief that Amazon filed in an attempt to persuade U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to block the agreement from taking effect.

A flurry of filings opposing and supporting the class-action settlement is expected by Friday — the deadline for most briefs in the case. At least two other Google rivals, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., are expected weigh in with their opposition by then.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are all part of a group called the Open Book Alliance, formed last month to rally opposition to the Google book settlement.

Other participants include the Internet Archive, the New York Library Association and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, representing about 1,500 authors, on Wednesday became the latest group to join the alliance.

The U.S. Justice Department, which is taking a look at Google’s book deal, has until Sept. 18 to share its thoughts on the case. That filing may provide a better indication whether Justice believes Google’s deal with authors and publishers would violate U.S. laws set up to prevent predatory pricing and promote competition.

Amazon left little doubt where it stands. Its brief brands the provisions of Google’s settlement as “a high-tech form of the backroom agreements that are the stuff of antitrust nightmares.”

Although not all the critics have been as strident as Amazon, opposition has been mounting to Google’s plans to create a registry that will sell digital copies of copyright-protected books on behalf of U.S. authors and publishers unless they withdraw from a class-action settlement. Even the German government expressed its opposition to the settlement earlier this week, even though the agreement only covers U.S. copyrights.

Google is downplaying the objections of Amazon, as well as the anticipated protests from Microsoft and Yahoo, as potshots from frightened rivals.

“The Google books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it’s understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition,” Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said.

Seattle-based Amazon not only sells books, both in print and digital form, but also is trying to create a new distribution channel with its electronic reader, the Kindle.

The Authors Guild, one of the parties that reached the settlement with Google, thinks Amazon is opposing the settlement because it wants the Kindle to be the primary method for buying and reading digital books. “Amazon apparently fears Google could upend its plans,” said Paul Aiken, the guild’s executive director.

Google would turn over most of the revenue from its digital book sales to the authors and publishers, just one of the many benefits that the Mountain View-based company is touting. What’s more important, Google contends, is that millions of out-of-print books and other works collecting dust on library shelves would be more accessible if they are stored in its digital library.

More than 10 million books already have been scanned into Google’s electronic index since 2004. The settlement would clear the legal hurdles that have been preventing Google from stockpiling even more digital books to show and possibly sell.

While the concept of a library accessible around the clock from anywhere with an Internet connection has plenty of supporters, opponents cite concerns over how much control Google would be able to exert over pricing and how much information the company intends to collect about the books that people are reading.

Even some proponents of the settlement are telling Judge Chin that he probably needs to address the monopoly concerns and privacy issues raised by the deal.

“This is a pivotal moment in the history of access to recorded information, not unlike the introduction of moveable type or the birth of the Internet,” Susan Benton, president of the Urban Libraries Council, wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to Chin.

A court hearing on the settlement is scheduled in New York on Oct. 7.