>> ...including yours, Mr. Drummond, and welcome you to begin our discussion this morning.
>> DAVID DRUMMOND: Well, thanks so much Chairman Conyers.
It is indeed an honor to be back. Ranking member Smith, committee members, thanks
for having me here to discuss how the Google book settlement will benefit the reading public
and spur competition in the emerging electronic book industry.
Imagine if a student living in a rural area, or inner city, could go to a local public
library and read from millions of books in the combined collections of some of our nations
greatest universities and libraries: University of Michigan, University of Texas, Stanford,
the New York Public Library. What if a blind student suddenly could access
millions of digital books to unlock knowledge foreclosed from the visually impaired today.
Then consider the author whose life's work, a book no longer in publication, suddenly
becomes available online so anyone can find it, buy it and read it.
That's why I'm excited to be here, because these, and other opportunities, will be created
by the settlement of a lawsuit brought against Google by authors and publishers.
Now this settlement is a result of three years of painstaking negotiation, but I'm proud
of what we've achieved. The settlement will create an educational,
cultural and commercial platform to expand access to millions of long-forgotten books
for anyone in the United States. It will enrich our country's cultural heritage
and intellectual strength. As I'll explain, the product we provide today
is fully compliant with copyright law. The settlement will let us improve our product
in ways that will expand access for the public, provide rights holders choice and compensation,
lower barriers to entry in the electronic book market, compliment Orphan Works legislation
and preserve Congress' role in setting copyright policy.
Now, there's been a lot of talk that our scanning efforts originally violated copyright law.
I reject that. I reject it wholeheartedly.
We strongly believe that we would have won the case on the basis that copying for the
purpose of indexing, which is the same thing we do on the internet, is a fair use under
existing precedent. And let me be clear about one thing, because
there's some confusion , and it's an important point.
Although we scan books, if it's in-copyright book we are not displaying any more than a
few lines of text around the search term. We call this a "Snippet View."
And we believe that, just like web search, indexing and showing snippets does not violate
anyone's copyrights. Now, if you're on Google Books today and you
see more than a short snippet, you're looking at a book that's directly licensed to us from
one of our 3,000 publishing partners, or you're looking at a book that's in the public domain.
Now, since 2004, Google has scanned more than ten million books, two million public domain
books and two million from our partners. The other six million are still subject to
copyright protection but largely out of print, meaning that there's no current market or
easy access to these books. The settlement dramatically expands access
to these out-of-print books, and it's this new access that makes the settlement a far
better outcome for the parties, and for society, than if either of us had won the lawsuit.
First, rather than showing just snippets, we'll now be able to show a preview of up
to 20% of the book. This will let users browse books and read
a few pages, as they do in bookstores today. Second, Google can offer for sale a digital
version of the book, with 60%... 63% of the revenue going to the rights holder.
We don't sell books today, so we're entering this with absolutely zero market share.
Third, we can provide an institutional subscription for colleges, libraries and other organizations.
Small colleges are eager to use the subscription to track faculty and students, and level the
playing field with larger institutions. And we'll give every public library across
the country free access to our database at... at one onsite computer.
Now, at any time, a rights holder can direct Google to turn these displays off, set the
purchase price itself or make other granular choices.
Out-of-print books stopped generating revenue for authors and publishers long ago, so no
incentive exists to resolve the complicated question of who owns the digital rights.
And it's not simply a matter of locating the author.
Decades old contracts may or may not have included digital rights.
Long ago communications may been disputed, and clearing the rights often costs more than
the economic value of the out-of-print work. The settlement will change that.
It creates a registry to locate rights holders, distribute revenue, resolve disputes and license
works to other providers besides Google. Some claim that the settlement will harm competition,
but the agreement is non-exclusive in every possible respect, and actually lowers barriers.
Let's be clear about this. Any search engine that wants to scan and index
in-copyright books to compete with us can already do that as a fair use.
Any book retailer who wants to scan books can make deals with our library partners and
do what we did. So, many of the critics confuse Orphan Works
with the real problem, which is rights clearing. It's not that the book is orphaned, it's that
the two parents, sort of, can't work out who owns it, and it's not really cost effective
to try. The settlement doesn't make this... make it
any harder for anybody to do this, it actually makes it easier.
Now, there might be a small portion of books that truly abandoned, and here the settlement
compliments Orphan Works legislation. Past measures didn't really address for the
rights clearance issues, which really are the lion's share of the problem.
Years ago, we called for effective Orphan Works legislation, as the chairman alluded
to. We'll continue to support these efforts, and
we believe that the settlement makes this task, legislative task, easier as we funded
a private sector initiative and a mechanism to clear rights that actually reduces the
scope of the problem. And let me clarify one last thing.
The settlement of private litigation does not take away Congress' power to set copyright
policy. Critics may dislike the use of class actions
in copyright cases, but it's the judge's role to apply Rule 23 to assure a fair process
for the class members. And as a means to address private litigation
in the U.S., the settlement's consistent with all of our international treaty obligations,
which is a view that's confirmed by the leading scholars.
While much time and energy has been spent on the settlement, it's not really Google's
vision for the future of digital books. It's kind of the past.
We're partnering with bookstores, publishers and device makers to develop an open platform
that allows readers to find and purchase digital books from any device.
It's this open platform, and the availability of the newest titles, that's going to drive
competition and commerce with digital books, not the out-of print books.
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
>> Thank you.