Google Books judge wants to wait for second edition
The judge tasked with approving or rejecting Google’s proposed copyright settlement with authors and publishers has delayed a public hearing into the case. His announcement has led to rumors that Google is planning to rewrite the settlement to quell critics.
Judge Denny Quinn noted in his announcement that, “Under all the circumstances, it makes no sense to conduct a hearing on the fairness and reasonableness of the current settlement agreement, as it does not appear the current settlement will be the operative one.”
The hearing had been scheduled for Oct. 7 for some time, though that didn’t stop a wide range of organizations, both government and private, waiting until as late as last week to file objections. However, it appears to be the objections of the US Justice Department which have caused Google to rethink its plans.
Google has yet to confirm it is redrafting the settlement, but that certainly appears to be the case. At this stage there appear to be three areas which Google might have to revisit before it can be confident of getting the settlement approved:
- The settlement calls for all digital books sold through Google to give publishers/authors a fixed royalty rate of 63 percent. It’s likely it will have to allow individual publishers the rights to negotiate their own royalty rates; otherwise the settlement may breach competition laws.
- Google may well have to give up its claim to have the rights to all orphan books (those still in copyright but where the rights holder can’t be traced.) There’s a strong argument that nobody has the legal ability to assign these rights to Google unless and until relevant legislation is passed.
- If Google does retain its claims to orphan books, it may have to rethink its plan that unclaimed royalties go into a central fund. Several states have laws which say unclaimed royalties must go to the state treasurer.
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