2010 Odissea Google Libri. Il Google Book Search Project e la nuova proposta di accordo transattivo

One of the greatest achievements in the last years is the Google Books project, that has scanned to date almost 10 millions of books; many of them were available only in few of the most prestigious research libraries. The lawsuit against Google Books, and the following Settlement, illustrate some of the limitations of Google Books. It is here analysed the first Settlement (October 2008) and the proposed Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA), or Settlement 2.0 (November 2009). The opponents of the settlement are the majority. The 18th of February 2010 the U.S. District Federal Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan postponed the controversial due to the voluminous amount of feedback on both sides. In Italy the 10th of March 2010 Google had reached an agreement with the Italian ministry of culture to scan up to a million books housed in the national libraries of Rome and Florence, concerning out-of-copyright books published before 1868. The non-exclusive agreement will make books available immediately and free of charge, both on the Google platform and on platforms controlled by the participating Italian libraries. University libraries are uniquely tasked by the public to be repositories of human knowledge and information. Here divergent views on economic value of the project are examined, in particular the new business models supplied by a multi-sided platform like the Google one. Google Books Search, in fact, can help a wider access to the cultural heritage because it has the potential to deeply change the way knowledge is transmitted and to democratize access to information. The paper describes the legal, technical and economical issues that bedevil the GoogleBooks project, particularly in relation to copyright, privacy grounds and antitrust matters.