The European Commission on Monday urged its member states to modify their current copyright rules in order to deal with the digitization of books in the European Union.
The challenge is to ensure a regulatory framework that enables a rapid roll-out of services, similar to those made possible in the United States by a settlement with Google, EU commissioners Viviane Reding and Charlie McCreevy said in a statement.
Under the settlement in the U.S., American authors and publishers could receive 63 percent of the online revenue from digitized books generated by Google. The settlement still requires U.S. court approval.
The commissioners' statement came ahead of a series of workshops and meetings between the European Commission and a variety of interested parties, including rights holders, information technology companies and consumer organizations.
The meetings started Monday with an information hearing on the U.S. class action settlement concerning Google Books, a digitization project that aims to make many hard-to-find and out-of-copyright titles searchable online.
"It goes without saying that digitization of copyrighted works must fully respect copyright rules and fairly reward authors, who could be the biggest winners from better access to a Europe-wide online audience," the commissioners said. "However, we also need to take a hard look at the copyright system we have today in Europe."
Up to now, only about 1 percent of the books in national libraries of EU countries have been digitized. The EU needs copyright rules on orphan works -- books with unknown authors -- and out-of-print works, which represent around 90 percent of European libraries' collections.
Following this week's meetings, the European Commission was expected to report its preliminary findings to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.
Until an agreement is reached in Europe, Google can only digitize books that are no longer covered by copyright and whose authors have been deceased for more than 70 years. Google will need to obtain consent from all rights holders before it can scan a European book still in print or protected by copyright.
By Yan (XFN)
