Judgment stalls Google book settlement
Judge declines to reward mass unauthorised scanning
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The 2008 settlement between the Authors' Guild and Association of American Publishers and Google is in limbo for a while, after a New York District Court judge rejected it as "going too far".
The settlement, reached after Google was sued for its mass-scanning of books without permission, had given the Chocolate Factory the green light if it paid US$125 million to copyright holders.
Handing down his judgment, Judge Denny Chin said the agreement gave Google a significant advantage over its competitors. Giving the company the right to scan books and make them available online without copyright holders' permission was, he said, "going too far".
The Wall Street Journal reports that the judge also said the previous agreement had rewarded Google for "engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission".
The judge has suggested that the agreement be revised so that copyright owners opt-in to Google's book-scanning programme rather than opting out, as they have to do under the previous arrangement. ®
COMMENTS
@ Atonnis
"Google tend to take a 'we deal with the US law and once we get that agreement we do what the hell we want in other countries' approach to the world."
Which would make them identical to the US Government, wouldn't it.
No
The US Government's approach is to ignore their own laws until caught.
And then to try and pass new laws so they can continue and be absolved of their past lack of compliance.... when they be bothered.
Easier still is to twist the dictionary's arm and rename things like torture as enhanced interrogation, etc, and suddenly all is fine.
@ratfox Yes he can...
You're in a trial and you're working out a settlement. The courts have an obligation to validate that the settlement doesn't violate any laws.
In a trial you have a couple of outcomes....
* The plaintiff drops the case. (Judge does nothing)
* The plaintiff and defendant work out terms... (court allows them or not.)
* The case goes through trial and the judge determines guilt and the amount of awards to the winning party. (Assuming that its a bench trial, not a jury trial)
Google can appeal all they want. They will lose. Google's settlement essentially tosses the copyright laws out the window. If they haven't revamped the USPTO to not allow software patents or business method patents, they aint gonna mess with the copyright laws.
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