Indian publishers are against Google

New Delhi: Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation (IRRO) and the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP) moved to the New York district court against the Google Book Settlement's (GBS 2.0) alleging copyright violation for scanning several books in Indian languages without notifying the authors, reports Economic Times.

The publishers who went to the court are Star Publications, Abhinav Publications, Daya Publication House and Pustak Mahal. Siddharth Arya, Legal Counsel for IRRO said, "Google's unilateral conduct is a brazen attempt to turn copyright law on its head, by usurping the exclusive rights of the copyright holder".

The IRRO was formed in 200 to license reproduction rights of books and other publications. It is an organisation owned by authors and publishers. Talking to IANS, Arya said, "In the name of innovation, Google has scanned several thousands of copyrighted books with no permission from the authors - whether for free or for value. They have also scanned books in India vernacular languages. This is a clear violation of Indian and international copyright laws," Arya told IANS by phone.

This process has been going on since 2004. Google has scanned millions of books under copyright protection by reaching an agreement with several universities in the U.S. Under the initiative, known as the Google Library Project, the internet giant has made available the snippets of these books online. "The outcome of all of this was GBS 2.0 that incorporates minor cosmetic changes but continues to violate basic copyright laws. It retains several fundamental issues in the original settlement such as a mechanism known as 'opt out'," said Arya.

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