The Internet Archive wants to be part of Google’s settlement with the Authors Guild over the Google Book Search program. In a letter posted on the Web site of the Open Content Alliance, a joint library repository managed by the archive, the group’s lawyers asked the judge in the case for permission to file a motion to join the proceedings as a “party defendant.”
A nonprofit group dedicated to building a digital library of Web sites and “other cultural artifacts in digital form,” the archive is best known for the Wayback Machine, a repository of archived Web sites. Like Google, it has also been scanning books. With a million works in hand from more than 150 libraries, the letter states, “the Archive’s text archive is similar to and competitive with defendant Google’s book search project.”
The similarities mean that the archive “would greatly benefit from the same limitation of copyright liability that the proposed settlement provides Google,” the letter continues. It says that without such protection, the archive would not be able to provide some of the services it currently offers, given the legal uncertainties that surround so-called orphan works whose copyright status is murky.
The request to file a motion is part of a last-minute flurry of legal activity surrounding the much-watched case. Objections must be filed by early May, and the court is expected to rule on the settlement in June. —Jennifer Howard
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