News & Developments

No Ruling Yet in Google Book Search Fairness Hearing

22 Feb 2010

Judge Chin will provide his interpretation of the legality of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement when he has had time to give due consideration to the submissions made for and against the Settlement at the Court Hearing last week.

Objectors outnumbered the supporters at the Hearing.

U.S. attorney William Cavanaugh slammed the Google settlement and advised Judge Chin that the settlement "turned copyright on its head." He stressed that procedural rules could not be used to modify the rights of authors under copyright law and indicated that the publishers and the Authors Guild did not have the right to enable a third party such as Google to use an author's work without their permission. He said that if the Judge approved the proposed Settlement, the Department of Justice could intervene.

A broad range of concerns about the proposed Settlement were voiced by objectors at the hearing.

The most contentious issue was the fact that the settlement required authors to "opt out" if they wanted to prevent Google from scanning their books. Google continued to claim that the deal was fair because rightsholders had been offered a licence. But why should authors have to go to the trouble of opting out when copyright law already provided them with protection against others making their works available to the public without authority. It is difficult to claim that it was fair for Google to do so on their behalf without their authority.

It was seen that the only way to fix the problem and make the settlement "fair", was to change the agreement to an "opt-in" process. We await Judge Chin's decision with interest

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