The Open Book Alliance -- an organization dedicated to "advancing and protecting the promise" of digitizing books -- believes that said digitization of books is a seismic change that will help reduce the literary divide in our nation and our world, and open up new ways to more efficiently and thoroughly conduct research.

However, it is critical that the commercialization of books does not trump the benefits of their digitization. And the current Google Book Settlement does just that, according to the organization.

The Google Books Settlement is the settlement agreement reached in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google in 2005 citing "massive copyright infringement" related to its Google Books Library Project, an an effort by Google to scan and make searchable the collections of several major research libraries.

Google first reached a proposed settlement with writers, the Authors Guild and members of the Association of American Publishers in October 2008, two years after the parties filed suit against the company claiming copyright infringement for publishing samples of scanned books online. Under the deal, Google will pay US$125 million and establish a Books Rights Registry to identify and compensate appropriate rights holders. Objections raised in the weeks leading up to the final fairness hearing last fall, however, forced the parties to amend the settlement in November. Among other changes, it narrowed the class to authors and publishers of works in the U.S., Australia, Canada and the U.K., and set up an independent fiduciary to make decisions regarding unclaimed works.

The Open Book Alliance (OBA) calls it "a flawed settlement" and have sent their own proposal to the US Congress and an audience of digital book advocates and stakeholders. The organization and its partners believe a successful digital public library must employ the following tenets:

° Open process: Only an open and deliberative conversation in Congress will appropriately weigh the concerns of all stakeholders and create bright-line laws that apply equally to all consumers, companies and stakeholders.

° Public guardian: To ensure the widest participation by content holders and greatest public benefit, the digital book database should be entrusted to a neutral, civic, not-for-profit organization. Respected librarians, like Harvard's Robert Darnton, have suggested a public guardian that is a not for profit or public sector library, such as the Library of Congress. In a similar vein, the governments of France and the Netherlands have entrusted public institutions with the administration of digital libraries.

° Public interest: Any successful digitization effort must not be exclusive to a single for-profit company as a result of legal arrangements delivering unfair monopoly. It also must uphold the rights of authors and copyright.

The OBA is calling on Google to halt its current strategy, "which focuses on fattening its profits and ensuring its continued domination of the Internet search market at the expense of broader social responsibilities," says OBA's Peter Brantley.

"Instead, Google, and the parties to the proposed settlement, must instead commit to joining this new inclusive process and engage the broad audience of advocates that share a passion for the digitization of books, promoting open competition and access to digital books for the widest number of people," he says.