Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Time Warner Inc.’s DC Comics, publisher of stories on Batman and Superman, and software maker Microsoft Corp. today added their formal objections to an agreement reached by Google Inc. over a book-scanning project.

“Access to millions of works will be consolidated into one company,” DC Comics said in a court filing objecting to the agreement reached last year between Google and U.S. publisher and author groups. “All of this access comes at an enormous cost to the fish caught within the net -- the copyright owners.”

Google was sued in 2005 by authors and publishers who said the company was infringing their copyrights on a massive scale by digitizing books. Under the settlement, Mountain View, California-based Google would pay $125 million and set up a “Book Rights Registry” so copyright owners could be compensated.

Today is the deadline for objections, and filings are arriving from the French government, Japanese authors, the Canadian standards board, and the state of Connecticut.

France contends the agreement violates international copyright law by placing undue burdens on authors and publishers, and would give Google too much control over published works.

‘Googlizes’ Literature

Under one aspect of the agreement, Google would make digital copies of books that are no longer commercially available yet still covered by copyright. The out-of-print books would be made available for preview and purchase, unless the author tells Google not to.

“The settlement positions Google as the gatekeeper of public knowledge in a manner likely to stifle the rich diversity of voices heard and enjoyed by France and other nations,” the French government said in its filing. It “homogenizes (or “Googlizes”) French literature by turning books “into a merely industrial byproduct of a consumer database.”

Google said the agreement will “bring back to life” millions of books that are moldering on library shelves. Dan Clancy, a Google engineer, said yesterday the program will create a new market for out-of-print books.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin has scheduled an Oct. 7 hearing on whether to give the agreement final approval. The U.S. Justice Department, which is investigating whether the agreement violates antitrust law, has until Sept. 18 to make any statement on the issue.

‘Scope of Owners’

Microsoft, echoing arguments made last week in a court filing by Amazon.com Inc., said that the U.S. Congress alone has the task of “defining the scope of copyright owners’” rights and remedies. The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing Sept. 10 in Washington.

The world’s biggest software maker urged the judge to reject the agreement, as did search engine company Yahoo! Inc., which is part of a coalition that claims Google is trying to control the access and distribution of world’s largest database of books and have control of so-called “orphan works” whose copyright owners can’t be found.

Fifty-eight authors, led by Yale professor Harold Bloom, as well as the American Society of Journalists & Authors and the National Writers Union, a group of 1,450 writers, said in a filing to Chin that the settlement turns “copyright law on its head” by effectively granting a broad license in all future works to Google unless authors and publishers “take affirmative action to preclude this result.”

‘Perpetual Business Deal’

The Canadian Standards Association, which publishes and has copyrights in thousands of product design and other standards, said the agreement forces a “perpetual business deal” upon copyright holders “in ways that go well beyond the facts” that led to the lawsuit, the group said.

Hachette Livre, a unit of France’s biggest media company, Lagardere SCA, opposed the accord, as did the group Consumer Watchdog, which says the settlement is “monumentally overbroad” by selling the works of authors who fail to step forward to protect their rights.

“The parties to the settlement have in essence replaced the U.S. Congress as the entity responsible for devising copyright law,” wrote lawyers for the Free Software Foundation, which says it defends free software users.

Professor Support

More than a dozen antitrust law and economics professors backed the agreement, saying the settlement will allow them to search for and obtain information in the works that will aid them in their research efforts. Sony Corp., which had previously announced its support, today filed a court document outlining its reasons.

The European Union held a daylong hearing yesterday to see how the settlement will affect the 27-nation bloc.

European publishers said they were concerned their books, which are still commercially available in Europe, would be considered “out of print” if they’re not sold in the U.S. Google said in a letter to publishers that any commercially available book in Europe won’t be part of the settlement and thus won’t be considered an out-of-print book.

The case is Authors Guild v. Google Inc., 05-cv-8136, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at decker1@bloomberg.net; David Glovin in New York federal court at glovin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 8, 2009 11:36 EDT