Google Book Deal Gets "Preliminary" Court Approval; More Boosters Emerge
Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 11/21/2008
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- Federal judge grants preliminary approval
- Hearing June 11, 2009
- More support from outside library community
(This article first appeared in the November 20 LJ Academic Newswire.)
For such a broad, complex settlement deal, the Google Book Search settlement deal seems to be on a fast-track. The Associated Press this week reported that New York District Judge John Sprizzo has granted the deal “preliminary approval,” and has scheduled a hearing for June 11, 2009—less than a month after the deadline to file comments on the settlement. The prelim approval is little more than a formality at this point, as the real action will begin once comments and objections have been gathered.
Nevertheless, Google lawyers told reporters the quick preliminary approval augured well for the deal. However, such a quick preliminary approval raised eyebrows among some observers. “I'm a little surprised, in part because there are many serious objections to the settlement (alongside many serious endorsements),” Open Access advocate Peter Suber wrote in his blog, “and, in part because the settlement is so large and complicated that I would not have thought a judge could read it with the care required for a preliminary judgment, and weigh up its vast array of pros and cons, this soon after its release.” The settlement was announced on October 28. Washington-based lawyer Jonathan Band, however, explained that the court’s “main objective in reviewing a class action settlement is to make sure that the settlement actually is in the interests of the class, and not just the lawyers representing the class.”
More support emerges
Meanwhile, the deal continues to gain more support, if from outside the library community. Chris Snyder, in a Wired blog post entitled Google Settles Book-Scan Lawsuit, Everybody Wins, argued that “provided a bit of a windfall for the content holders.” And, in a U.K. Times Online op-ed, David Lammy, the minister of state for higher education and intellectual property, also lauded the deal. “The agreement is one of a mounting number of recent examples where business and rights holders have taken the initiative and struck deals that have the potential to streamline the administration of copyright in the digital age,” Lammy wrote. Although the deal—at present—only applies to the United States, Lammy envisioned greater implications.
“The result, if it works, will be an evolution in the way copyright licensing for printed works is administered and a revolution in the freedom of access to harder-to-find works, all within a system that will remunerate rights holders fairly and give them control over the use of their works.”
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