Friday, November 20, 2009
Google Books Settlement Proceedings to Drag on Until Mid-February
The latest revision of the Google Books settlement has been granted preliminary approval by a New York district judge, though it will be some time before that approval is finalized–if it is finalized. Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York said Thursday that he will hold a hearing Feb. 18 on the new agreement, which will restore access to millions of out-of-print books, but may also one day give the company a monopoly on the largest digital library in the world.
Google’s five-year-old copyright feud with the publishing industry will drag on a few days more now that the deadline for submitting a revised settlement proposal has been pushed back once again. Google and attorneys representing the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers were supposed to file the document today, but instead asked the judge overseeing the matter to give them until the end of the week. 
Add another name to the list of opponents of the Google Book Search Settlement: Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights. In testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Thursday, Peters tarred the deal as “fundamentally at odds with the law” and villainized Google, saying the company is making a “mockery” of the copyright protections in the U.S. Constitution.
Google claims that its Book Search settlement will “bring back to life millions of lost books in a way that serves the interest of all.” And if that truly is its goal, the company is going to have to put its own Brobdingnagian self interests second to those of others–if only for a little while. To wit, Google’s announcement Monday of a number of concessions to the European Union, which seems a bit dubious of the whole thing.
The Open Book Alliance–or “Sour Grapes Alliance,” as Google likes to call it–formally launched Wednesday afternoon, debuting a new Web site, as well as the manifesto with which it is challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers.
Earlier this year, Christine Varney, the new antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, said she planned to return the DOJ to a policy that led to landmark antitrust suits like the one against Microsoft in the ’90s. And she delivered on that promise in short order. Since her confirmation in late April, the DOJ has seen a sort of Trustbuster renaissance. It has begun inquiring into potentially anticompetitive recruiting practices in Silicon Valley. It’s opened an investigation into the Google Books settlement. And now it’s scrutinizing cellphone exclusivity deals, like the lucrative one between Apple and AT&T.
Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The notification after the jump.
Google’s gone and run afoul of the Department of Justice again. Its interest piqued by the growing outcry over the company’s proposed book-search settlement with authors and publishers, the agency has opened an inquiry. 
