Google offered an olive branch to rivals of its digital book efforts at a congressional hearing on Thursday, but Amazon was not interested.
The move involves a major point of contention in Google's project to bring books to the internet and in a proposed settlement of class-action suits that author and publisher groups brought against the project.
Specifically, Google announced a reseller programme that would let competitors get some measure of the rights — and revenue — that Google itself could get through the settlement.
"Any bookseller — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft — would be able to sell the books covered by the settlement," said David C Drummond, Google's chief legal officer.
Under the proposed settlement, Google would get 37 percent of revenue from e-books sold through its service and, through the reseller programme, the reseller would get "the significant majority" of that 37 percent, Drummond said.
He announced the offer during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on digital books issues raised by Google Books project. If the settlement is approved, Google would get the right to sell not just books for which it had explicit agreements with rights holders, but also for out-of-print books that are still in copyright for which Google does not have explicit permission.
That blanket permission has worried some, notably Amazon, which has scanned three million books with permission and opposes the settlement. Drummond explicitly said Amazon would be allowed to participate the revenue-sharing program.
Amazon: No thanks
But Amazon indicated it was not interested after judiciary committee chairman John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan, asked the company's reaction to this "thrilling new piece of information" from Google.
"The internet has never been about intermediation," said Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president of global policy. "We're happy to work with rights holders without anybody else's help."
The hearing revealed some representatives, including the chairman, to be allies of Google. Also generally speaking in favour of Google's work were Zoe Lofgren and Brad Sherman, both Democrats from California.
"It is a good thing to provide millions of Americans access to published works that otherwise wouldn't be available to them," Conyers said. "A library available to every household with an internet connection — this could be the greatest innovation in book publishing since the Gutenberg press."
But a high-profile opponent emerged in Marybeth Peters, the register of copyrights at the US Copyright Office.
"By permitting Google to engage in an array of new uses, the settlement would alter the landscape of copyright law", in effect subjecting authors to "compulsory licences" for their works, Peters said.
"Compulsory licences are the domain of Congress, not the courts," she said, adding that the settlement could cause diplomatic stress for the US because foreign authors' books are in US library collections that Google is scanning.
Opting in or out
Google wants to be able to sell electronic books online and has scanned 10 million books since 2004 as part of the programme.
About two million are out of copyright, meaning Google and anyone else may do as they like with them; about two million are in copyright and in print, with Google...
