Google Books Settlement: What are the Intentions of the Open Book Alliance?

A deadline has been set for the Google Book Search Settlement and all the interested parties, supporters and competitors are approaching the D-day with apprehension. There are volumes of legal briefs that are filed and scholars believe that the presiding judge is going to find it enormously difficult to resolve the matter quick and fast.

The settlement hearing has been scheduled for the 7th of this month. In addition to this, there is also a hearing on September 10th in the House Judiciary Committee.

There is a lot at stake with this deal and the interests of many like the immediate competitors, public and market competitors have to be balanced while reaching a verdict. A website was recently established by Google listing out all those in favor of the settlement which includes big names like Sony Corp. and Authors Guild. The Guild believes that this settlement can foster competition and destroy the monopolist status of companies like Amazon who is clearly an opponent of this deal.

Gary Reback, who is the antitrust lawyer, has filed a legal brief in favor of the Open Book Alliance which includes bigwigs like Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon who argue that the Google Books Settlement is illegal and can only be legalized if the government orders Google to hand over the license of the scanned books database over to third parties like Microsoft and Amazon for a marginal fee.

Microsoft claims that Google has been misleading the publishers by stating that it began to scan books many years earlier to compile a ‘card catalog’ of all the works; the company later changed its stand and entered into the digital book-selling business. What remains to be seen is if the arguments of the Open Alliance companies who had earlier abandoned their own book-scanning efforts are justified in seeking access to the Google database.

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