Google pledges only booklist in copyright row

By Xie Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-21 08:59

Google on Friday agreed to provide a list of Chinese books it had scanned to put up in its digital library, but it still refused to admit having "infringed" upon copyright laws.

Late last month, the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), which protects Chinese writers' copyrights, said Google had scanned 18,000 books by 570 Chinese writers without authorization for its library, Google Books, which is available only to Internet users in the US.

After Friday's second round of talks with CWWCS, Lin Ling, a public relations officer entrusted by Google to deal with the case, said no remarkable progress had been made, except that the booklist would be provided in December.

Zhang Hongbo, deputy director-general of CWWCS, said another round of talks would be held with Google China, the search engine giant's subsidiary on the Chinese mainland, early next month.

Erik Hartmann, the Asia-Pacific head of Google Books, will shift base from Singapore to Beijing, to handle the negotiations, Zhang said. The first round of talks was held on Nov 2.

Contemporary authors such as Han Han, Chen Cun, Xu Kun and Zhang Kangkang are among those whose works have been copied for the search engine giant's website.

In China, the term of protection for the right of publication (which normally belongs to the writer) is the lifetime of an author and 50 years after his/her death. In case of a work by two or more writers, the term expires after the 50th year of the last surviving author's death.

On Wednesday, the Chinese Writers' Association (CWA), a partner of the CWWCS, joined the fight against Google and urged it to resolve the dispute as soon as possible. "The CWA will resolutely safeguard authors' rights," it said.

It demanded that Google provide a full list of Chinese authors' books it had scanned before Dec 18 and present a plan to resolve the issue by the end of the year.

It asked Google not to scan any more Chinese works without permission.

Google's Book Search program, for which the search engine giant is scanning hundreds of thousands of books and placing parts of their contents online, has met with legal challenges in other countries as well.