James Grimmelmann (New York Law School) has posted How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement (Journal of Internet Law, Vol. 12, No. 10, April 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The proposed settlement in the Google Book Search case should be approved with strings attached. The project will be immensely good for society, and the proposed deal is a fair one for Google, for authors, and for publishers. The public interest demands, however, that the settlement be modified first. It creates two new entities - the Books Rights Registry Leviathan and the Google Book Search Behemoth - with dangerously concentrated power over the publishing industry. Left unchecked, they could trample on consumers in any number of ways. We the public have a right to demand that those entities be subject to healthy, pro-competitive oversight, and so we should.
Highly recommended. Also by Grimmelmann: The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books.
