Two U.S. authors and publishers groups on Nov. 13 filed a revised settlement document in a U.S. court to permit Google Inc. to distribute millions of digital books online.

The revised settlement is only to cover books that were registered with the U.S. copyright office or published in Britain, Australia or Canada, and will exclude books published in Japan.

However, the Internet giant Google has already scanned and distributed (via its search engine) numerous foreign books, including Japanese books, without obtaining the approval of the holders of the copyrights. Google has not clarified how it proposes to deal with the data from those digitally copied books.

As a result, Japanese authors and publishers groups and the government’s Cultural Affairs Agency have voiced concerns about the possibility that Google might keep on digitally copying books in countries not covered by the revised agreement.

The U.S. Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers filed their modified agreement with the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. The two groups and Google in October 2008 reached an original settlement deal over a class-action suit launched against the Internet search giant’s Book Search Project.

In September of this year, Shuppan Ryutsu Taisaku Kyogikai (Ryutaikyo), a group of 99 small-scale book publishers in Japan, announced that it would opt out of the settlement agreement. Hearing reports of the new, modified settlement deal, an official of Ryutaikyo said, “The revised settlement is still based on Google’s illegal copying of copyrighted works and therefore, we cannot accept the revised settlement.” The official said that the group would demand that Google delete Japanese books from its archival database and that it stop any further digitalization of Japanese books.

Kenta Yamada, chairman of the speech and expression committee of the Japan P.E.N. Club, said that the group aims to determine how Google plans to deal with the database that contains Japanese books and whether it will suspend scanning Japanese books. In September, the Japan P.E.N. Club officially submitted a notice of objection to the U.S. court against the original settlement agreement.

That settlement would have given Google permission to include the works it scanned in its search engine and to sell access to some works online in exchange for sharing revenue with the authors and publishers who owned the copyrights to the books.

“Japanese rights holders are excluded from the revised settlement. This means that we Japanese authors are not due to obtain compensation for the unauthorized copying,” said Masahiro Mita, a vice president of the Japan Writers’ Association. “We plan to demand that Google either delete digitalized Japanese book contents from its database or promise not to use them for online distribution,” Mita said.

The Japanese government’s Cultural Affairs Agency has remained a silent observer, noting that the legal dispute involves only private individuals and that the government should not intervene.

On Nov. 6, however, the agency formally requested that the U.S. government promptly let copyright holders in Japan know about the details of the revised settlement.