International Law

Google Books settlement case

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

I have been writing quite a bit about the Google book search case on this blog. Now a court decision on the “Amended Settlement Agreement” has been published.

The settlement agreement has failed. The Court has denied the motion for final approval.

I applaud the decision, for the convincing reasons laid out in the discussion part.

That means Google does not get rewarded with a forward-looking exception for their wholesale contempt of copyright. And that the global outburst of objections to this deal did receive some attention.

Now the interesting question is: What exactly in Google’s Internet search business is different from the book search? If there is no meaningful difference (I don’t think there is), Internet search would need to change to opt-in as well, at least under the analysis presented by this particular decision.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on March 28, 2011 (boomark / email).