New Deadline Set in Google Settlement

On Wednesday, October 7, at a hearing in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Denny Chin set a deadline of November 9 for organizations involved in the Google Settlement to provide the court with a revised agreement. In mid-September, the Justice Department asked the court to reject the Google Settlement and to encourage the parties -- which include the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google -- to continue negotiations to modify the agreement to comply with federal rules of civil procedure regarding class action suits as well as copyright and antitrust laws.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, told the New York Times that "the core agreement is going to stay the same." However, Richard Sarnoff, former chairman of the Association of American Publishers and co-chairman of the American unit of Bertelsmann, noted that whether the amendments would be minor or more significant, "may be in the eye of the beholder," noted the Times.

Under the agreement, which was initially announced by the Authors Guild, AAP, and Google in October 2008, 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 current settlement, 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.

A wide range of groups and individuals, including The Open Book Alliance had raised concerns about the settlement. 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.