Concern grows for orphan books in $125 million settlement of Authors Guild v. Google

Opposition to Google Books Settlement Jells
The New York Times, April 17, 2009
By Miguel Helft

With a May 5 deadline for filing objections to the Google books settlement looming, opposition to and criticism of the settlement continues to cement.

I recently wrote about concerns among copyright and antitrust scholars and others that the settlement would grant Google a monopoly over millions of so-called orphan books, which are out of print and whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. I later gave more details of where the opposition was coming from.

Now some of the opposition is starting to jell. The Internet Archive, which is currently working to match Google’s effort to digitize millions of books from major libraries, has filed a motion to intervene in the case. [...]

Read the entire article in The New York Times.