Google, Italy agree massive book scanning project

GOOGLE said Wednesday it had reached agreement with the Italian culture ministry to scan up to a million books housed in the national libraries of Rome and Florence.

"Google will cover the costs of scanning all these works and will set up a scanning centre in Italy," making them available on its Google Books website, the company said in a statement.

"This is our first agreement with a national government's culture ministry," Nikesh Arora, the head of Google's global sales operations, told a news conference. The move comes as publishers and tech companies battle for dominance in the fast-growing digital e-book market, with Google positioning itself as a go-to place on the Internet for potential book buyers.

The agreement regards out-of-copyright books published before 1868, including writings by Italian physicist Galileo Galilei and German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler.

Google will also provide the libraries with digital copies of the books to post on their own websites. Google has already agreed to scan and publish online books from many universities such as Oxford, in England, and Columbia in New York, as well as public libraries in Bavaria in southern Germany, New York and Lyon, France.

"It's a partnership that opens a new road for Italian culture," said Italy's Culture Minister Sandro Bondi, adding that the libraries' agreement with Google does not mean they are bound to give access only to the US tech giant. Mario Resca, an official at the Italian culture ministry, estimated that the project would cost €100 million ($190 million). But Arora said Google expected to spend "a lot, lot, lot, lot, less," without stating a precise figure. The scanning centre will employ about 100 people. The Google Books project has run into legal problems both in Europe and in the United States. A French court ruled that by scanning entire books or excerpts and putting them online, "Google has committed acts of copyright violation to the detriment of Le Seuil" and two other publishers.

Google is appealing the ruling, which came after a three-year-old case brought by Les Editions du Seuil, one of France's biggest publishing houses. In the United States, Google recently reached a settlement after the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers filed a class action lawsuit in 2005 charging Google with copyright infringement. AFP