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Grimmelman: Google Book Search Deal Should be Approved, Could Be Improved

Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 11/13/2008 12:54:00 PM

  • Deal overall is beneficial
  • Detailed suggestions for revisions
  • Deal skirts "portable" fair use verdict, but also potential disastrous loss
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With a full reading of the proposed Google Book Search settlement under his belt, New York University professor of law James Grimmelman says the complex proposal may not be ideal but is worthy of approval. “My starting point is that the settlement is a good thing,” Grimmelman blogged on the Laboratorium. “Everyone is better off than in a world where the alternative is no Google Book Search.”

Among the positive aspects of the settlement, according to his detailed reading of the document, are new revenues for publishers and authors; “at least some minimal all-you-can-drink privileges at the fire hose” for libraries; the ability of universities, schools, and other institutions to “subscribe to the fire hose;” and an “incredibly useful book search engine, one that will come increasingly close to being genuinely comprehensive over time.”

Revisions
While he strongly supported approval of the settlement, he also offered an array of cogent criticisms—suitable for framing in your own amicus brief, he suggested, should you so inclined, and should the court allow. Among Grimmelman’s suggestions for improvements:

Although Grimmelman joined others in lamenting the loss of a “fair use” precedent via the settlement, the deal, he stressed, was overall very beneficial—and the least risky option. “I would rather have a definitive fair use finding than the settlement,” he conceded, “but that’s not the choice on the table.” He suggested the case was the perhaps the most “doctrinally controversial copyright issue since Grokster,” noting there was a “very strong chance” that a court would have, disastrously, found definitively against fair use had the case gone to court. “This bird in the hand definitely beats the ones in the fair use bush.”

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