Authors Guild, AAP Request Postponement in Google Settlement Hearing

The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers(AAP) have asked for a postponement of the Final Fairness Hearing on the Google Settlement, which was scheduled to take place on October 7 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The request for more time came after the Justice Department filed a brief last Friday calling on the court to reject the Google Settlement in its "current form and [to] encourage the parties to continue negotiations to modify it so as to comply with Rule 23 and the copyright and antitrust laws."

The Authors Guild, AAP, and Google said they looked forward to addressing the issues raised by the Justice Department, as reported by the New York Times. And they viewed the filing as an indication that the government was willing to work with them to make the settlement possible.

A wide range of groups and individuals, including The Open Book Alliance, which includes Amazon.com, has raised concerns about the settlement, which was announced by the Authors Guild, AAP, and Google in October 2008. In early September 2009, the Open Book Alliance filed an amicus brief in opposition to the Google Settlement in which it contended that the parties had constructed a settlement that would allow them to fix prices and maintain a monopoly.

On September 2, the Authors Guild responded to the Open Book amicus filing: "Amazon's hypocrisy is breathtaking. It dominates online bookselling and the fledgling e-book industry. At this moment, it's trying to cement its control of the e-book industry by routinely selling e-books at a loss. Eventually, when enough readers are locked in to its Kindle, everyone in the industry expects Amazon to squeeze publishers and authors. The results could be devastating for the economics of authorship....Amazon apparently fears that Google could upend its plans. Amazon needn't worry, really: this agreement is about out-of-print books.... The agreement opens new markets, and that's a good thing for readers and authors."

Under the agreement, Google agreed to pay a minimum of $45 million into a Settlement Fund for copyright holders whose books it had digitized on or before May 5, 2009, and $34.5 million to establish a Book Rights Registry, a nonprofit entity with authors and publishers equally represented on its Board of Directors, to oversee the resolution of claims and the distribution of payments. Google also agreed to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees and other administrative costs.

Under the terms of the agreement, Google would allow users to see excerpts from books at no charge, and it would sell both access to individual books and institutional subscriptions to the database. Rightsholders would receive 63 percent of all revenue from sales, advertising placed on any page dedicated to the book, and other commercial uses.

Full details of the agreement are available on the Google Settlement site. BTW's overview of the settlement is available here, and the ABA Board statement on the settlement is here. --David Grogan