Judge Rejects Google books Settlement (updated)

Submitted: March 22, 2011 - 5:53pm
Originally published: March 22, 2011
Last updated: March 23, 2011 - 11:55am

Location:

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 500 Pearl Street, New York, NY, 10007-1312, United States

US Circuit Judge Denny Chin has rejected a deal between Google and lawyers for authors and publishers to let the gigantic search engine make money presiding over the world's largest digital library, saying the creation of a universal library would benefit many but would "simply go too far" by "grant[ing] Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners." Judge Chin said the deal gives Goggle "a significant advantage over competitors." He said the deal would be "rewarding [Google] for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case."

Google issued a statement: "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. Regardless of the outcome, we'll continue to work to make more of the world’s books discoverable online through Google Books and Google eBooks."

Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, said: "We are pleased that Judge Chin has rejected this settlement, even though we agree with him that there are benefits to Google’s book project. We were also pleased that the judge agreed with us in the specific issue of orphan works, as he ruled: ‘Google’s ability to deny competitors the ability to search orphan books would further entrench Google’s market power in the online search market.’ We look forward to continued discussion to work out a settlement agreeable to all along the lines Judge Chin recommended.”

Here's additional coverage:

Judge Rejects Google’s Deal to Digitize Books (NYTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html?ref=todayspaper

Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement (WSJ)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216923562033348.html?mod=ITP_marketplace_0

Judge throws out Google book deal (FT)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f7ee4948-54bf-11e0-b1ed-00144feab49a.html

Judge rejects settlement in Google plan to digitize books (SJ Merc)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_17673453

Google plan for out-of-print archive ruled unfair (SF Chronicle)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/23/BUG71IH6BB.DTL&type=tech