After a flurry of last-minute filings, an American judge must now begin untangling the mountain of competing claims about how a legal settlement granting Google the right to create the world’s largest digital library and bookstore would affect competition, authors’ rights and readers’ privacy.
The $125 million proposed settlement among Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which is awaiting review by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court in New York, has prompted dozens of opposing filings from individuals, rival companies like Amazon and Microsoft, advocacy organizations, groups representing authors and publishers and even some foreign governments.
It has also received the support of companies like Sony, civil rights groups and some antitrust and economics experts in academia.
Legal scholars say that Judge Chin will have to address not only whether the settlement is fair to authors, publishers and rights holders, but also whether it benefits the public at large. “The number and quality of opposition filings is very unusual,” said Jay Tidmarsh, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.
The agreement, which would bring millions of rarely seen books online, has clear benefits to readers and authors. But scholars say the judge probably will weigh those benefits against arguments that the settlement would limit competition. Opponents say it would give Google a quasi-exclusive license to profit from millions of out-of- print books and create a consortium that would have power to set prices for digital books. Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have vigorously disputed those claims, but the claims are being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department.
The court has the power to either approve or strike down the settlement, an option that would revive the lawsuits filed in 2005 by the authors and publishers against Google over its plan to digitize millions of…