Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Google hearing delayed

As expected, lawyers representing US based authors and publishers have requested the courts to postpone the hearing set to take place on October 7th, regarding the proposed Google settlement. More time is needed to examine the various objections and for further negotiations to take place. The issues are complex and cannot be settled overnight.

On Friday, the Department of Justice proposed several important changes to the proposed settlement, including new protection for unknown rights holders and allowing Google's competitors to gain access to and sell books within the registry, thereby preventing a monopoly.
The Open Content Alliance - which includes Amazon, Microsoft, and the Internet Archive naturally view this as an important victory, which will open up competition. It goes without saying, that the opposite is true for Google. We can safely say that the settlement as we knew it, is officially dead.

No comments: