NEW YORK (AFP) – Google, along with supporters and opponents of its ambitious digital book project, are set to appear in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday after five years of legal wrangling.
US District Court Judge Denny Chin is scheduled to hold a hearing beginning at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) about Google's deal with US authors and publishers that would allow the Internet giant to offer millions of books online.
Google, whose stated mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," is hoping to move a step closer to that lofty goal with a green light from Chin for its digital book project.
Opponents of the agreement are expected to urge the judge to reject it on the grounds that it raises anti-trust and copyright issues and gives Google sole rights to millions of out-of-print works.
The agreement resulted from a class action lawsuit filed against Google in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers (AAP) charging the Internet titan with copyright infringement.
Google, the Authors Guild, the AAP and two dozen backers and opponents of the settlement, which was reached in 2008 and modified since, are expected to present arguments at the day-long hearing.
Peter Brantley, co-chair of the Open Book Alliance, a group of critics of the agreement that includes Google rivals Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo!, said he does not expect a quick ruling.
"I would be surprised if everything comes to a climax on Thursday," said Brantley, a director of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, which maintains a digital library of websites and has its own book-scanning project.
"I think it's much more likely that the judge will at the end of a long day say 'Thank you very much and I'll get back to you.'"
The hearing is going ahead after Google rebuffed anti-trust and copyright concerns last week raised by the Justice Department and critics of the deal.
The settlement has already been changed once to take into account previous objections raised by the Justice Department and others that forced a delay of a hearing scheduled for November.
In its latest filing, the Justice Department said the revised settlement represented "substantial progress" but noted that "issues remain."
"The amended settlement agreement still confers significant and possibly anti-competitive advantages on Google as a single entity," it said.
David Balto, an anti-trust attorney and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress think-tank, pointed to a "strong likelihood" the settlement would be approved and "ultimately benefit consumers."
Under the settlement, Google agreed to pay 125 million dollars to resolve outstanding claims and establish an independent "Book Rights Registry," which would provide a majority of sales and advertising revenue to authors and publishers who agree to digitize their books.
