Google officials have admitted to having scanned more than 20,000 books under Chinese copyright protection, China Daily reported Tuesday.

The world's largest Internet search engine has been in negotiations with China's copyright watchdog for scanning works for its online library without permission.

The U.S. company emphasized the Chinese books they scanned were from U.S. libraries and some of them were available for public use. But it also admitted at least 20,000 books were under China's copyright protection, the newspaper said, citing Zhang Hongbo, deputy director of the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), which manages China's copyrights for written works.

Earlier this month, CWWCS officials said at least 18,000 books from 570 Chinese writers had been scanned by Google, with authors neither informed nor paid.

Zhang said he already discussed a timetable to solve this problem with Erik Hartmann, the Asia-Pacific head of Google Books. Google books would provide a complete list of scanned Chinese books to the CWWCS on November 16.

The CWWCS deputy director said they would depend on the negotiations to solve the problem and still want the company to admit infringement and apologize.

More than 50 writers have signed a letter of protest demanding an apology from Google and compensation, said the newspaper.

(Xinhua News Agency November 3, 2009)