Amazon wants courts to quash Google settlement on digitization of books

Amazon.com Inc. has asked the U.S. District Court to annul Google Inc.'s copyright settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, claiming it is anticompetitive. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, the Amazon action says the agreement would increase how much consumers pay for digital books and undermine Congress's role in amending copyright law to address changes in technology.

Amazon (which dominates online bookselling) said, "Because such a resolution would fly squarely in the face of Congress's constitutionally delegated role to legislate changes to the copyright law, it must be rejected."

Of course Google demurred: defended the settlement in a statement.

"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," it read.

Google struck the deal wtih authors and publishers last autumn to resolve a drawn-out class-action lawsuit over Google's digitization of books to include in its book-search service.

The settlement gives Google permission to use the works it scanned in exchange for sharing revenue it generates from ads and sales of digital copies and subscriptions with rights holders through a registry.