More trouble for Google in China, the New York Times reports:
Two Chinese writers’ groups claim that Google has scanned Chinese works into an electronic database in violation of international copyright standards. The organizations are urging China’s authors to step forward and defend their rights.
[…] Google has sent a representative to Beijing to meet on Monday with officials of the China Written Works Copyright Society, which manages Chinese copyrights. The company insists it has fully complied with copyright protections.
Google’s ambitions to digitize millions of books, in most cases without first seeking permission from publishers or authors, has been contentious in the United States and elsewhere for more than four years.
But most Chinese authors learned of Google’s efforts only this month, after writers’ groups were notified of a potential class-action settlement between Google and American authors and publishers. Some Chinese authors discovered that Google had obtained their works from libraries in the United States and scanned them into its database.
