Justice Dept. Opens Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Books Deal 112
Mad Hamster points out a NY Times report that the US Department of Justice has launched an antitrust inquiry (may require free registration) to take a look at the deal Google has made with book publishers and authors for its Book Search service. Quoting:
"Lawyers for the Justice Department have been in conversations in recent weeks with various groups opposed to the settlement, including the Internet Archive and Consumer Watchdog. More recently, Justice Department lawyers notified the parties to the settlement, including Google, and representatives for the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, that they were looking into various antitrust issues related to the far-reaching agreement. The inquiry does not necessarily mean that the department will oppose the settlement, which is subject to a court review. But it suggests that some of the concerns raised by critics, who say the settlement would unfairly give Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books, have resonated with the Justice Department."
Update — 4/29 at 14:25 by SS: CNet has new information on the extension Google was seeking in order to contact rightsholders for a decision on whether to join the settlement or opt out. Google had originally asked for 60 days, but a judge has now granted them four more months.
Business is business (Score:2, Insightful)
Google licenses these works for a fee, and gains the right to redistribute.
Other parties don't license the works, and they complain they are shut out of the market.
Didn't Netscape cry foul in the same way? I'd hate for the Internet Archive to suffer the same fate as Netscape.
Re:Business is business (Score:5, Insightful)
Google licenses these works for a fee, and gains the right to redistribute.
Usually, in order to get a license you have to get it from someone with the actual legal right to give it. Although, of course, anything is legal if a court decides so...
Re:Business is business (Score:4, Interesting)
Congress could easily put the orphaned book deal into law, whereby anyone could declare a book orphaned to a government agency that would look the book up in what's currently being published. If it's not, you would pay a royalty to that agency, who would keep the money in escrow in case the copyright owner comes forward. If and when they do, they could make a deal with you to keep publishing, or politely ask you to stop. Such a law would be a much better deal than a specific settlement between one company and the guilds.
Re:Business is business (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, in other words, all it takes is one person to decide that they want to override your legal rights and then complain to the appropriate agency to have some faceless bureaucrat to override your legal rights.
In other words, a faceless bureaucrat can override the rights holders legal right to negotiate royalties or to deny the right to reprint outright.
In other words, the rights holder is now forced to live with the fait accompli of the faceless bureaucrat and hope they can come to deal with the person or company that republished his work without his permission.
Such a law would be a travesty, just like this 'settlement'.
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FUD much my friend? Even in the industries that have these in place already, that isn't what happens. Nor do your comments actually line up with what GP said.
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It's not FUD, it's facts. If you had a clue, you'd know that.
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Um, they have.
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I can't find anyplace any assertion that the so-called rights holders (actually more accurately titled "plaintiffs" in this case) actually hold the rights to every work that google has their hands on. I can't find one to the contrary either, but I usually assume wrongdoing because it's more common than not. Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.
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You aren't looking very hard at all are you? How many times have people explained class actions in this and the other slashdot articles concerning this settlement?
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I get the idea of a class action lawsuit (more or less) but that still doesn't address the issue; I read the intro to the settlement which named the plaintiffs; there is no class-action lawsuit because there is a settlement; the plaintiffs included a specific set of named publishers; nothing in the settlement actually says whether all the works were held by those plaintiffs or not. Of course, IANAL. But I still couldn't find anything which explicitly stated whether all the related works belong to those plai
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Your first statement is directly contradicted by the remainder of your comment. So no, I don't believe I'll be pissing in the wind for you any time soon.
In fact, the statement "here is no class-action lawsuit because there is a settlement" pretty much indicates a complete failure of understanding of even fundamental legal issues, much less understanding a class action.
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They've settled with the Authors Guild, a group that has no legal standing to represent anyone other than their members, plus a few others, yet the settlement covers every book published in the US whose copyright owner hasn't opted out.
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No and... no. Read more. Talk less.
What is actually happening? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can anyone actually correctly summarize what is going on with this Google book deal, I find it hard to believe that Google is trying to gain exclusive rights over all these unclaimed (copyright wise) books completely and forever for all copies of this book everywhere.
Isn't it really that they just want rights to put up the books that they scanned (and some people that had agreements with them to help scan)? Is there something that would stop people from rescanning those books and posting them up some place else?
Links to clear sources would be best... Where's my Google Security Blanket(TM)!
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Re:What is actually happening? (Score:5, Informative)
No, however an issue is folk like you spouting off without knowing what they are talking about, muddying the waters.
The actual real issue is thus:
Right now, Google has been hit with a class action lawsuit on behalf of pretty much every author ever, because it's a class action, if you are a member of the class you are bound by the settlement terms unless you opt out of the class before the deadline in May.
The current settlement agreement provides Google with a number of things, in return for a number of things from Google. However, the biggest issue worrying people is that Google will receive a license to republish out of print books on demand. The so called "orphan works" which are not yet in public domain but are also no longer being printed and therefore can only be found if you are lucky enough to find one in a library or used book store.
They are (potentially) getting this license because as a class lawsuit, the lawyers running the plaintiff's side of the arguments are empowered to speak for all the members of the class and thus can legally agree to this even if the authors involved aren't actually aware of the settlement. Of course, if you are a member of the class and you think the lawyers are doing a crappy job, since all members of the class have an equal voice in the issue, you could always raise Cain to have your own lawyers replace the ones already doing the work.
What worries everyone is that since this license is granted via settlement through a class action lawsuit, many people feel that it would be impossible for anyone else to get the same license. And unfortunately, the judge in this case has already declined to allow other companies to 'join the defendant' so they can get in on the settlement.
All the rest of the noise and turmoil is bullshit and a tempest in a teapot, since part of the settlement will be you can opt-out of Google's publish on demand system if your works would count as 'orphaned works' and if your books are still published, then Google doesn't get the rights to sell you anything, without your explicit permission.
How this turns out is anyone's guess. It's possible that the settlement could go through, giving Google a fairly large mass of work which is out of publication but not yet in public domain, which in theory only they and the individual authors of those works would have permission to reprint. It's possible the settlement could be re-arranged to allow third parties to 'buy into' the setup, preventing anti-trust issues. Or it's possible that the settlement just gets tossed and we go back to square one.
This sort of highlights the flaws in our current copyright system. Not that this settlement is possible, but that there are actually works out there that would be covered by 'orphaned works' clause of it. The point of copyright was never to be "we give you exclusive rights to making copies of this book for a limited time period, then you remove it from our culture forever by burying it".
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The point of copyright was never to be "we give you exclusive rights to making copies of this book for a limited time period, then you remove it from our culture forever by burying it".
I ran across this train of thought in another thread, and I disagree with it - there is nothing stopping someone archiving works of art today, and waiting until copyright expires to make them available later on. There is nothing in copyright law, and quite rightly so, that requires copyright holders to ensure that their work is preserved and available for public release and consumption
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Actually it fairly blatantly contradicts your explicit statement that this was some sort of dodgy deal. Regardless of whether the deal goes through or not, the people making the deal have the legal authority and power to make it.
Which, unless you are reading at a fourth grade level, should be obvious to you. Given that, lets just go with the assumption that your idea of 'clearly state' could more easily be defined as "fill with as much FUD and other biased bullshit as possible".
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But you do seem to be very quick to insult and resort to harsh language. Says a lot really.
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Says I've spent a lot of time reading bullshit from folk like you who would rather whinge about life and how evil everything is rather than fix whatever they consider the 'flaw' in the argument.
The 'decisions' made by the legal rights holders aren't being overruled. If you are someone with rights to a work being covered by this settlement, you have numerous options today to ensure your decision is the one being respected. If instead you want to sit there and bitch about how it's not fair that you have to do
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That *is* the issue. If I make a decision to allow my work to go out of print, then that decision should stand until I reverse it myself or I lose the rights over the work. It should not be arbitrarily reversed by a third party.
Copyright law grants copyright holders the ability to control distribution
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Are you even capable of reading the English language? If you have made such a decision, then take the steps necessary to ensure that decision is respected.
You know, I felt it was horribly unreasonable to have to bend over and pick up that quarter the cashier dropped this morning when I was ordering a bagel. I suppose you feel it would have been more appropriate for me to just stand there and bitch loudly all day till she came around the counter and did it herself?
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I don't care about any individual copyright holder that doesn't know about this deal. I don't really care about Google. What I care about is that no-one else can compete with Google in the same market, because they haven't been sued yet.
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The point is, that copyright is a right granted expclusively to the author of a work, unless the author explicitly grants it to someone else.
This settlement breaks that model of copyright, by saying that a work is only copyrighted if the author of the work notifies everyone that might have a copy that they are not allowed to copy it.
While not unreasonable, such changes must never be retroactive (as this one is) because it creates a disadvantage for authors of past works, which may not have specified such.
Th
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That, unlike the rest of your arguments in this thread about the legal standing of the Authors Guild, is actually a valid concern. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out given nothing is set in stone or even runny jello yet.
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Class Action.
CLASS Action
CLASS ACTION.
Why do we need to keep repeating the same information over and over again before people actually pay attention.
No one is disputing the legal rights of the copyright holders. No one is taking those rights from them.
What IS happening is a lawsuit is being brought on behalf of all the rightsholders in question and therefore the resolution of said lawsuit is binding to all of them. Except for the ones that opt out of the class action by the new September date.
It doesn't mat
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The biggest issue here is that the settlement is basically a deal between Google and damn-near everybody. The settlement feels too much like a contract between two entities, one of which is Google, and the other of which is "basically everybody except those listed here (i.e. those that opt-out)".
Normally, contracts don't work like that. They normally have the name of each party listed on them. There are some exceptions, such as contracts of adhesion, but even those require some explicit action on the part o
and what percentage of authors prefers not being (Score:1)
And it's hardly as though those authors have much choice in the matter.
So no, this is *not* the issue. Yours is just a fringe case.
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Since when did the Writers Guild have the right to sell the rights to a book written by someone who is not a member of their organization? This isn't an instituted trade body with special legal status, it's just a lobbying group. I think the deal that Google are trying to strike is probably a good one for keeping orphaned books available, but the people that sued them in the first place have no authority to make that deal, it needs legislation.
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Repeat with me children "CLAASSS ACCTIOONN!" Oh very good. I knew you could.
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A class action is ok for assigning damages for past actions, but this agreement also sets up a clearing house to handle Google's on-going payments for its future violations as well, which is a little odd. It in effect sets Google up with an on-going business model that no-one else can compete against them on without having a class-action lawsuit of their own brought against them first that they can settle in the same way.
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If you have a license to reprint, how is reprinting a 'future violation'. Try again, this time will attention paid to what is actually going on.
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Since this license to reprint exists for books that have not yet been written, I would say there is the ability to have future violations. Google will be free to reprint future books long after this case fades from the headlines, and the authors do not realize they need to opt out.
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I'm trying to work it out, but it's complex and fast-moving, and you aren't helping by being such a jerk. You may be right, but just saying "shut up, I'm right" isn't a way to get any thing constuctive done, unless you're just trying to win.
I don't think a class action suit has the remit to grant such a licence. Damages for past violations is one thing, creating a new framework is another. There's no precedent for this.
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Uhm. No. The settlement provides no such thing, and this is why I get testy over the crowd of Googlephobics that are screaming.
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The settlement only applies to books published prior to January (5th I think) 2009 so in 10 years time you will only be able to get books from Google that are older than 10 years. In 50 years, only 50-year-old books. They will need to break the law again and get sued to extend their range of books.
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I admit I haven't read the whole thing nor understand the legal aspects of it, but from the settlement.
As of the Effective Date, in the
United States (i) Google may, on a non-exclusive basis, Digitize all Books and Inserts
obtained by Google from any source (whether obtained before or after the Effective
Date)
No where that I have seen in the settlement, or bits I have read about it, is there statements that this is limited to works created before the effective date. If I am wrong please let me know.
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You want to work it out? Read. Ask questions, listen.
You want to spout off crap that is uninformed and stated as if you felt it was fact rather than an opinion and wild shot in the dark it is, get used to people being jerks to you.
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From http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=118722&hl=en#book [googlebooksettlement.com]
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Thanks, I stand corrected.
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So far the only "crap" that I have spouted is that the Writers Guild and other defendants don't have the authority to cut a deal of this nature. Far from being "uninformed", I read this opinion in this interview [fictioncircus.com] with Professor James Grimmelmann, of New York Law School.
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The technology to archive works for that long doesn't exist. Sure, it would work for a few billion years, but the expansion of the sun would be a big problem, and if you get around that, the heat death of the universe is pretty much impossible to beat.
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Hey thanks for that, it was pretty clear, but I still am wondering if it was about the specific set of scans that Google made or if it grants Google exclusive rights to the text regardless of the scans which clearly be very bad.
That clarification is really important because clearly blocking all other parties from the book table would be a clear abuse of monopoly position by Google.
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http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.html [authorsguild.org]
from the Authors Guild page:
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The argument for opt-in/opt-out in this particular case basically boils down to whose side of the coin you want to favor when it comes to preserving access to works. If you believe in the Disney model where it's perfectly alright to remove your works from the public, till they become public domain, either because you don't want people to see them any more or to ensure the next time you publish the work (and thus renew the copyright because you remastered it and thus created a 'new' work) you'll have a high
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The argument for opt-in/opt-out in this particular case basically boils down to whose side of the coin you want to favor when it comes to preserving access to works. If you believe in the Disney model where it's perfectly alright to remove your works from the public, till they become public domain, either because you don't want people to see them any more or to ensure the next time you publish the work (and thus renew the copyright because you remastered it and thus created a 'new' work) you'll have a high demand, then you want an opt-in system.
If you believe in the public good argument which points out the only reason you were given copyrights in the first place was so you could make money from your works in a set amount of time before they became public domain, then the entire concept of "orphaned works" is blasphemous from the start. Remember, the idea of copyright isn't "You control the idea" it's "You control the means to reproduction so everyone has to pay you to get a hold of the idea". In this case, you are for opt-out because while it's still against your beliefs that a book can be purposefully kept out of publication, it's at least the option that allows you to republish those works where the author didn't care enough either way to indicate their desire.
I think though, reading the above, you know my bias on the issue. To me, anything that is copyrighted can be considered a 'derivative work' based on the entire culture you were brought up in. You would not have been able to make it without that, and thus you shouldn't have sole right to control it forever. However, these days, that is what is going on, since many things that have been copyrighted will never physically last long enough to fall into public domain. How many movies and shows from the 1900's to the 1950's have been lost because the film they were printed on crumbled into dust a long time ago. How many books have been lost because they are no longer published and the pulp they were printed on has disintegrated by now.
By the time these works become public domain, how many of them will even be understandable given the inevitable drift in language?
A large number of new or only moderately popular authors can only get limited publication runs of their materials and then have to lobby the publisher if they want another run. I'm not aware of the specifics of this case, but if those works count as orphaned during the typical 1-5 years it takes for new authors to get a second set of books produced, this settlement may make it impossible for new authors to make a living with writing unless they opt out. I think in that case, an opt-in requirement would be
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Let's ignore for a moment what I said here [slashdot.org]. Because what you've said is interesting on it's own.
Lets say that this did cover our new budding artist's work. And lets say they didn't opt-out of the plan, for some reason.
What really would be the harm in having Google as your publisher rather than your 'big name' publisher? Google will be paying you 60% of the profits, what do you think your publisher is going pay? The primary difference would be Google wouldn't be pimping your book out to the New York Times. O
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the "opt-out" component isn't a function of the settlement, it's a function of the way class action suits are managed. In this situation, because Google seems to be getting some advantage out of the settlement, making Plaintiffs opt out of the settlement seems unfair. But generally, in class-action suits, the whole point of the system is that the class is included in the suit automatically, and then they can choose to opt-out if they wish.
This rule exists to protect the interests of the Plaintiffs, who if t
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The theory may be decent, but the implementation of class-actions is so bad that it's worse than not having any. What good does a free copy of MSWindows do me? I don't want it, I don't want to push it on anyone else. It has NEGATIVE value. But due to a class action suit about MS monopolizing the market I was once entitled to a free copy of MS VisualJ++ (the name was something like that) ... long after I'd decided I didn't want to have anything more to do with their EULAs. A big HUZZAH!
The only time cla
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Take it up with your elected representatives. They make the laws.
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I do. They either ignore me or lie about what they're getting ready to do.
(I count "Thank you for your helpful correspondence" and similar as ignoring me, unless it's followed by appropriate action.)
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I know. It's frustrating and maddening, and I suppose my last post was a little too abrupt. Sorry about that.
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What's the music implications?
What's the software implications?
What's the movie implications?
What's the art implications?
We keep treating each of these copyright areas like it's its own little playground, and the Big Effect results are going to clash hard soon.
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True - but the dodgy part is this: It is not clear that organization that is representing itself as the legal representatives of the class is in fact legally qualified to do so.
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Is it that you don't understand, or is it that you don't want to understand, what a class action lawsuit [web-access.net] is.
Even a basic understanding of the concept answers every one of your statements above. Don't make me pull a Gary Oldman [youtube.com] on you.
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It is that I *do* understand what a class action lawsuit is.
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An orphaned work is one that is still in copyright whose author cannot be found. By definition, a bona fide orphaned work can't be claimed since the aut
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And unfortunately, the judge in this case has already declined to allow other companies to 'join the defendant' so they can get in on the settlement.
You know you have a broken legal system when someone wants to join the defendant. I thought they suffered penalties, not received rewards.
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clear sources [googlebooksettlement.com]
Or as clear as it gets, anyway. What it looks like is that an association of five or six publishers got together and sued google, who is putting over USD$15M into a fund to pay out authors who claim their piece of a licensing deal for their content brokered without their consent. It is extremely similar to the way that royalties are "paid" on music, and is probably the first step in organizing an RIAA/MPAA-like association of major book publishers which will be used, as the RIAA and MPAA are, t
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Other posts explain what this class-action lawsuit is. The proposed settlement would give Google some non-exclusive rights to all the books. Using the settlement, an author* could assign those rights for his works to another hosting company.
What people are complaining about is the large subset called "orphan works", for which no author can be found. A competing hosting company can't use this settlement to get any rights to those works. People seem to be missing the fact that Google will gain no right to
...to profit from millions of books... (Score:2, Interesting)
Inter-library loans are great and all, but what about when no library anywhere has a copy remaining on hand? Or, more practically, when no library in your particular state/country/jurisdiction has a copy which you are allowed to check out? Very dog-in-a-manger, yeesh.
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And more bullshit from you:
If you deliberately allowed your work to go out of publication then you can opt out, either now, as part of the class action, or later when the system is setup by contacting the non-profit registry that will be setup as part of the settlement and indicating you don't want your works republished till it becomes public domain, at which point it's not up to you.
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Here's a simple fact of life grasshopper, class actions aren't about being fair to everyone in the world. They are about trying to settle issues that affect a whole group of people without having to deal with each and every one of them while still being fair to the majority of them.
If you care enough about your 'rights' on this, then either put forth the effort to opt out now and be excluded from the class altogether, or put forth the effort to ensure your wishes are respected once the settlement. If you do
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If Google wishes to archive them and make them available, they should wait for the copyrights to expire.
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Here's a reason why it should be a class action: because the costs to each particular plaintiff to sue for a remedy would outweigh the possible awards they could receive. Think about it, we're talking about books that are out of print. The authors and publishers aren't making any money from sales, because there are no sales. So Google comes along, scans the books, and makes some ad revenue from making those books available and searchable. What exactly has the author lost? In terms of money, they've lost not
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As the rights holder, I should also have the right to not distribute.
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You're hilariously hypocritical.
On the one hand, you're mocking the notion of "the spirit of the social contract" and insisting that the cold hard limits of the law are the end-all and be-all with respect to copyright.
On the other hand, you're pleading that "omg it's so unfair that the laws around the class action process work the way they work", trying to appeal to some extra-legal notion of "fairness" that flies in the face of the law.
I hate to say it: since the "spirit of the social contract" thing is ba
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Or, more practically, when no library in your particular state/country/jurisdiction has a copy which you are allowed to check out? Very dog-in-a-manger, yeesh.
Is there anyone who still believes global copyright is good for humanity?
That raises a question (Score:2, Interesting)
How the heck do you change a case against you into an exclusive agreement in your favor?
When you've committed a tort, it's generally you the defendant that has to be making concessions..
It seems like the exclusivity provisions should be stricken from the settlement, and it should just be a matter of authors offering google the privileges and duties they want in exchange for fair compensation.
The option should be left open for the publishers to negotiate similar deals with other services in the future
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The authors are receiving compensation. Especially those being reprinted, since Google will be providing 60% of the profit to them.
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The option should be left open for the publishers to negotiate similar deals with other services in the future.
No, the option should be left open for another party (e.g. Internet Archive, Amazon, etc.) to compete with Google under the same terms. Also having a hard cut-off publishing date (Jan 5th 2009) for books that can be covered by this deal. In 50 years, you will only be able to get 50-year-old books from Google Books. They'll have to break the law again in order to get sued and make another class action settlement in order to update their service. The deal is a stupid one - nice idea, but it needs to be fixed.
I love libraries, but they are obsolete (Score:2)
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The sooner I can download what ever text I want, the better. I hope the governement doesnt stand in the way.
I wouldn't worry about the government standing in your way, I would worry about the author.
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The sooner I can download what ever text I want, the better. I hope the governement doesnt stand in the way.
I wouldn't worry about the government standing in your way, I would worry about the author.
I wouldn't worry about the author. I'd worry about the Authors Guild.
Re:I love libraries, but they are obsolete (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm asking these questions in sincerity. It seems that, for the most part, Slashdotters have a different way of handling the issues the arise from the medias differently. It's almost as if writers get treated with kids gloves in comparison to their musician and film producer peers. If you'd replace "writers guild" with "RIAA" and/or "MPAA" you'd go from people talking over the issue with a somewhat level head to one where we'd hear howls for blood and unflattering references to their sexual preference. But the truth is that these issues are the same, all of them have the same problems and all of them have the same legal protections.
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Respect is a two-way street.
Perhaps the author's guild doesn't get the kind of hatred that RIAA and MPAA get because it doesn't deserve it as much.
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I don't see the Authors Guild trying to shut down all scanners and web servers on the off-chance that they are used for copyright violation, in the same way that the movie studios have attacked BitTorrent and DeCSS. They are targeting a specific organization that is trying to profit from copyright works. If Google started uploading entire movies onto YouTube I doubt that most people would support them either. There's a big difference between going after a big corporation that is running a system for money t
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you'd go from people [...] unflattering references to their[=~"people"'s] sexual preference.
Such as "We're fucking homo gays!!"?
(fucking: adj !verb)
;-)
The Settlement explained (Score:5, Informative)
If you guys really want to understand all of this stuff, as I did, I suggest you listen to my interview with Professor James Grimmelmann, who is writing a long, long, long brief examining all the issues for the court about this settlement in an amicus brief from the New York Law School.
He went to Harvard and Yale, interned for the Creative Commons, and used to be a programmer at Microsoft.
It's a lengthy interview, but we cover all the important stuff.
http://www.fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=356&mode=one [fictioncircus.com]
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A long brief? That's almost as funny as when I ordered what turned out to be a Medium XXL at my local Burger King.
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The English language is literally a riot.
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Only lawyers can say things like this with a straight face:
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a long, long, long brief
it takes a robust legal system to make a phrase like that make sense.
Questioning the whole idea of "antitrust" (Score:5, Insightful)
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In related news, murderers aren't inherently bad as long as they don't kill anyone.
Then they wouldn't be murderers...
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Re:Questioning the whole idea of "antitrust" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet barriers to entry, whether regulatory or otherwise, prevent entry into the market for a small competitor (and therefore there is no place for organic growth into a large competitor). Since we cannot ever have an ideal free market (in the economic sense), we will always have barriers to entry, even if all regulatory barriers were dropped.
Therefore, by default, a trust is bad, because it limits the potential for competition.
I'd like to point out to you that even the Austrian school of economic thought recognizes that corrections must be made for monopolies -- because even if they do not "abuse" their status (which they will, according to most all economic theory), they do limit competition by the very nature of the market. Trusts and monopolies ARE inherently bad, because they limit the ability of the economy to efficiently allocate resources.
But the governement created the monopoly. (Score:2)
In this case though, the government (through the courts) have singled out an individual corporation and granted them the right to do things that are illegal for every other individual or corporation the the country.
There are serious antimarket aspects to this settlement but the isn't the company, the problem is the government.
Uh-oh... somebody didn't pay their bribes... (Score:1)
I mean, otherwise how do we explain how some things are "Too big to fail," and others get anti-trust actions taken against them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they are not distant issues.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was ostensibly passed to protect consumers from the problems inherent in a market free of competition.
Google seems to be in the position to have a monopoly in the book indexing market. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and others hold an oligopolistic position on a panoply financial instruments. In both cases, competition would be/would have been beneficial for the consumer, but only in the former do we see any motion to investigate.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
What they should do... (Score:1, Insightful)
Is just come up with a standard license agreement that can apply to anyone, with a per-page fee, for all orphaned or out-of-print works still in copyright. Something along the lines of "Yes, we don't sell that work anymore (it's out of print), but if you want to obtain it for a minimum of $0.0X per page, you can obtain it from vendor A, vendor B, or vendor C, etc., as long as we get our pre-arranged cut of the deal." It might cut into publisher's ability to do reprintings at the original price if the cost
settlement doesn't give exclusive license (Score:1)
Google Book Settlement [google.com]
M. Settlement Agreement Between Publishers and Google
'4. Notwithstanding anything in this Agreement, the Publishers have and retain all rights that they have under the Class Action Settlement'
J. Summary Notice of Class Action Settlement
'The settlement, if Court-approved, will authorize Google to