From Library Journal
More Pushback Against the Google Book Search Settlement
By Norman Oder
The Google Book Search Settlement, heading for a court hearing in October but also the subject of a Department of Justice antitrust inquiry, is beginning to generate more skepticism from arbiters of the public interest....
Writing in the Huffington Post August 10, University of California, Berkeley, law [and information] professor Pamela Samuelson called the settlement, if approved, “the most significant book industry development in the modern era. Exploiting an opportunity made possible by lawsuits brought by a small number of plaintiffs on one narrow issue, Google has negotiated a settlement agreement designed to give it a compulsory license to all books in copyright throughout the world forever.”
Samuelson contends that Google, which had a good case that its scanning was fair use, chose to settle with the plaintiffs, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Authors Guild (AG), because it could then get access to the universe of books. And the APP and AG would be willing to settle because they’d get a privileged position as representatives of the larger classes.
Samuelson questions whether the AAP and AG were fair representatives of the larger classes, and whether the Book Rights Registry can represent “the thousands of times larger and more diverse class of authors and publishers of books from all over the world.”...