"A prevailing opinion in the cyber era is that providing information without charging fees directly from users does not necessarily mean using them for non-business purposes," Liu said.

For example, he said, it would be profitable if advertising was carried on the website page.

"It also depends on elements like the extent of the usage and injury to the copyright holders," he said.

Google offered to pay US$60 for each scanned book and 63 percent of income from online reading in the United States.

But Zhang said the CWWCS would not accept such settlement.

"Due payment is also on the schedule of our negotiations, but it is not the first priority," he said.

Zhang called more Chinese writers to defend their legal rights. So far most of the writers joining this campaign were literary writers.

"Many authors of scientific research papers did not even know what was going on," he said.

Zhang expressed concerns about the practice of similar digital libraries in China.

"They are all in the same dilemma with Google, risking copyright violation or having to obtain permission from every writer. That is the reason why domestic online libraries started operation years ago, but developed slowly," he said.

Online libraries would have difficulty efficiently securing deals without organizations representing writers, but very few such organizations existed in China and they only represented some authors, Liu said.

The CWWCS is representing about 2,000 writers in China on their collective copyright affairs.

(Xinhua News Agency November 5, 2009)