January 28 is the last day on which owners of copyrights in books published in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia can opt out or object to the proposed settlement of the Google Book Search (GBS) class action lawsuit initiated in 2005 by the Authors Guild.

There is a huge...

Just past midnight on a Saturday morning may be a fine time to go to a jazz club in New York City. It is, however, an odd time and place to hold a press conference to announce the settlement of a lawsuit.

Yet, representatives of Google, the Authors Guild...

Sergey Brin published an op-ed in the New York Times last Friday likening the Google Book initiative to the famous ancient library of Alexandria. Brin suggested that Google Books would be "a library to last forever," unlike its Alexandrian counterpart that was ravaged by fire. A digital library containing...

Version 1.0 of the proposed Google Book Search (GBS) Settlement is history, pushed into the dustbin by hundreds of submissions urging Judge Denny Chin to reject it, none more devastating than the one filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) just last Friday.

On the second day...

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a "Statement of Interest" on September 18 recommending that Judge Chin disapprove the Proposed Settlement Agreement in the Authors Guild v. Google case. Although DOJ recognized that the public would benefit from greater access to books if the settlement was approved, it has concluded...

Google reached a settlement agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in October 2008 aimed at ending lawsuits, brought in 2005, that challenged Google's unauthorized scanning of in-copyright books for its Google Book Search (GBS) project. As I explained last Monday, the settlement is audacious...

Sorry, Kindle. The Google Book Search settlement will be, if approved, the most significant book industry development in the modern era. Exploiting an opportunity made possible by lawsuits brought by a small number of plaintiffs on one narrow issue, Google has negotiated a settlement agreement designed to give it a...