Google's book settlement torn up
Google’s plan to digitise millions of books and create an online library has been temporarily thwarted by a US judge.
US Judge Denny Chin rejected a settlement agreed between the Author’s Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google on March 22 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Chin said that the settlement is “not fair, adequate, and reasonable”.
Authors and publishers—represented by the Author’s Guild and the AAP—filed separate complaints against Google for copyright infringement in 2005, because the search engine began digitally copying books owned by major research libraries after securing their permission to do so in 2004.
Google has scanned more than 12 million books since it began.
Chin said: “[The proposed settlement] would permit [the plaintiffs]...to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners.”
He added that the settlement would give Google a “significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission”. The settlement was filed in the New York district court in October 2008 as part of a motion for preliminary approval to resolve the actions brought against Google.
Under the settlement, Google would have made $125 million available for compensating affected copyright owners. This money would also pay for searching for the rightful owners of ‘orphan works’.
Hilary Ware, a managing counsel at Google, said: “This is clearly disappointing, but we’ll review the Court’s decision and consider our options. Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the US today.”
Judge Chin did not entirely rule out the possibility of a settlement. He said that objections to the settlement would be “ameliorated” if rights holders could opt in to Google’s scanning programme, rather than having to opt out under the rejected settlement.
