Administrative Law

From Google Book Search Settlement: A Publisher's Viewpoint with Tim Barton and Barbara Cohen - Oxford University Press interview at Stanford Fair Use & Copyright site

September 2009

Tim Barton: I also think that Google should drop the "most favored nations" clause in the agreement.

Barbara Cohen: I agree, if only because the MFN's meaning seems almost uniformly to be misunderstood. I keep reading concerns expressed by people who mistakenly read the MFN as broadly prohibiting the Book Rights Registry from giving any firm other than Google a better deal in any respect than Google has with respect to exploiting any of the books in the database. But in fact the MFN is an extremely narrow clause and is being misread. Only if, during the next 10 years, there is another class action and settlement involving a "significant amount" of the orphan works in the Google database could this clause be invoked. But, narrow though the MFN is, I agree with Tim that Google should eliminate it, if only to ease public concerns. The mere presence of this clause has been read by many as showing Google's monopolistic desires and this has cast a long shadow. It would be a shame if fears based on a misunderstood clause came to overshadow the settlement's remarkable potential to do good. If there are steps that Google and the other parties can take now to eliminate these concerns and ensure the settlement's approval, I hope that they do so.