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C&RL News February 2010  92

Google Book Search settlement
In mid-December, ALA and ACRL along 
with the Association of Research Libraries 
(ARL) continued the library associations’ 
ongoing efforts to inform the proposed 
Google Book Search settlement. 

On December 15, the library associations 
sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice 
(DOJ) asking for ongoing judicial oversight 
of the Google Book Search settlement, if 
approved by the court.

The library associations urged DOJ to 
request the court to review the pricing of 
the institutional subscriptions to ensure 
that the economic objectives set forth in 
the settlement agreement are met. Librar-
ies, as the potential primary customers of 
institutional subscriptions, are concerned 
that the absence of competition could result 
in profi t-maximizing pricing.

“In brief, we believe that active supervi-
sion of the settlement by the court and the 
United States will protect the public interest 
far more than any additional restructuring of 
the settlement,” the letter states.

In the letter, the library associations point 
out that the United States, in its September 
18, 2009, Statement of Interest to the court, 
agreed that Google would have exclusive 
control over the database, noting that un-
der the settlement there was “a dangerous 
probability that only Google would have 
the ability to market to libraries and other 
institutions a comprehensive digital book 
subscription.” 

In addition, the United States urged the 
parties to amend the settlement “to pro-
vide some mechanism by which Google’s 
competitors could gain comparable access 
to orphan works.” However, the Amended 

Settlement Agreement does not provide such 
a mechanism.

Google has a fi ve-year lead-time ad-
vantage over potential competitors, during 
which it has refi ned the scanning process 
and scanned as many as 12 million books 
into its search database. Considering this 
signifi cant head start, it is unlikely that any 
commercial competitor will enter into this 
unproven market in the foreseeable future. 
And there is no indication that the federal 
government or private foundations would 
fund the creation of a comprehensive da-
tabase of books to compete with Google’s.

The associations also expressed disap-
pointment with DOJ’s failure to urge the 
parties to the settlement, which include 
Google, the Authors Guild, and the Asso-
ciation of American Publishers, to require 
representation of academic authors on the 
Book Rights Registry board. 

As the groups explained in their fi lings 
with the court and in their meeting with 
DOJ, academic authors wrote the vast 
majority of the books Google will include 
in its database. Without representation of 
academic authors, the Books Rights Reg-
istry may establish a pricing model that 
maximizes profi t rather than public access 
to academic works.

The court has set a January 28, 2010, 
as the deadline for class members of the 
private settlement agreement to opt out of 
the Amended Settlement Agreement or to 
fi le objections, and February 4, 2010, as the 
deadline for DOJ to fi le its comments. The 
court will hold the fairness hearing Febru-
ary 18, 2010.

The full-text of the library associations’ 
December 15, 2009, letter to DOJ and “A 
Guide to the Perplexed Part III: Amended 
Settlement Agreement,” are available at 
wo.ala.org/gbs/. 

Jenni Terry is press offi  cer at ALA’s Washington Offi  ce, 
e-mail: jterry@alawash.org

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eJenni Terry