The Google Books Settlement Hearing Gets Postponed

The Google Books saga is getting dragged on for a few more days as the deadline for presenting a revised settlement deal was pushed back until Friday. Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, the two parties involved in the five-year-old lawsuit, said they would have a new settlement in place by Monday, but have now asked for a few more days to put the finishing touches.

The two sides claimed that the talks had been prolonged in part due to very recent meetings with the US Department of Justice. “The parties have been in discussions with the Department of Justice both prior to and since the October 7 status conference. We met with the Department as recently as this past Friday, November 6. In light of the above, the parties respectfully request this additional time to file the motion,” attorney Michael Boni wrote in the letter requesting the delay.

The settlement between Google and the groups representing authors and publishers has been the cause of much controversy and many major players in the tech industry got involved in the battle, even if some didn't really have any stake in it. The two parties have been involved in a lawsuit that has been dragging on since 2005. They reached a settlement in 2008 and the deal has been awaiting approval ever since.

The heart of the lawsuit and of the subsequent deal is the way Google will handle the so-called orphaned books, books that are still under copyright but for which the rights holder can't be found or determined. In the settlement, Google would be allowed to scan these books, add them to the online repository and even sell copies of them.

Rights holders could step in and request that their works be removed or to request a share of the revenue, but, by default, all orphaned books could be sold by Google without explicit consent. This, of course, was greatly beneficial to the public and, to some extent, to Google, but many claimed it would create a de facto monopoly on these books, despite the fact that the deal wasn't exclusive. Finally, among growing pressure from competitors and some organizations and after the DOJ asked the judge to reject the settlement in its current form, the parties involved voluntarily withdrew the original settlement deal and said they would have a revised one in a short amount of time.