Authors Guild et al. files revised $125m Google book settlement; ignores Chabon, Doctorow & Newitz’s privacy concerns

Late last evening, the Authors Guild and its allies (Association of American Publishers, Google) filed a revised edition of the proposed $125 million Google Books Settlement, which is being dubbed Settlement 2.0. While the Authors Guild trumpeted the revised agreement and posted details of the “big changes,” the Open Book Alliance, a consortium of opposition groups that includes Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, blasted it as "a sleight of hand."

In related news, Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), noted that Settlement 2.0 does not add any reader privacy protections, something science fiction writers Michael Chabon, Cory Doctorow and Annalee Newitz were strongly in favor of.

The New York Times provides a solid overview of the latest developments. For more details, check in at The Laboratorium, the blog of New York Law School Prof. James Grimmelmann.