14 DAY TRIAL // The Google Books controversy is stirring up again as the deadline for submitting objections to the revised settlement proposed by Google and the book author and publisher groups passed yesterday. While people had been critical of the updated version of the settlement, its fiercest opponent, at least judging by the big names behind it, the Open Book Alliance (OBA) waited until the last moment to file its objections. As expected, the group backed by Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo among others, not exactly members of the Google fan club, was unconvinced by the latest iteration of the settlement, calling it a "paltry proposal" and an attempt by Google to monopolize the market.
“The torrent of criticism to the settlement may have produced amendments to the class definition, but it has not affected Google’s conduct one iota…..All in all, little has been accomplished, save from Google’s perspective as it continues to build its lead over competitors. …The Court’s procedures are ill-suited for resolution of what is now at stake in this matter – rewriting the copyright law, restructuring the publishing industry, and maintaining a competitive search market,” the OBA writes in the filling.
On its website, the OBA claims that the revised settlement is merely a cosmetic touch up that doesn't go into any of the big issues. It also says that Google's effort to positioning Google Books as a "philanthropic effort" isn't fooling anyone and is just an attempt to cover up its real intentions, getting its hands on the biggest library of digital books in the world to help its scheme to take over the search market. (cue Dr. Evil pinky pose)
Because, you see, having access to all of this exclusive content will be a huge advantage over the other search engines when it comes to 'long tail' searches. Poor Yahoo and Microsoft would be left out of the 'lucrative' market, because long tail searches are known to be very monetizable, bringing search engines the majority or their ad revenue. Then again, probably not.
Of course, they could strike a similar deal with the publishers and start scanning millions of books themselves but that has the slight disadvantage of actually costing money, more money than paying a bunch of lawyers to go after the deal, anyway. Money which these companies would rather spend on something that would make a return on their investment, a completely reasonable approach.
"If Google can deny its search rivals the ability to integrate the same corpus of books [out of print books], Google’s lead in search will become insurmountable," the filing reads. Google doesn't deny anyone the ability to "integrate" those books, at best, it just doesn't share the ones it scanned, but this little tidbit would probably make the claims less dramatic. “Control of the search market is Google’s true goal,” as the OBA puts it, may very well be a true statement, but Google doesn't plan on doing it by scanning books.
There are real issues with the Google Books settlement, but they don't have to do with most of the things OBA argues about. The real concern is that it sets a bad precedent for copyright law as Google's Books scanning had a strong case for 'fair use', the doctrine which allows exceptions to the copyright law when using only portions of the copyrighted work or in special circumstances. It could also have spurred a copyright law reform, which it may yet do. Regardless, the final hearing in the long running case is set for February 18, when Judge Denny Chin will go through the revised settlement and all the filed objections and will decide if the deal gets his approval or not.
