Scott Gant on Google Books Lawsuit
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 06:56AM Video: Scott Drake interviews Scott Gant
The Google Book Search settlement has its first significant objection. Author and attorney Scott Gant filed a 50-page objection with the court that claims the sweeping deal is an illegal expansion of class-action law.
(Ny Times) “This is a predominantly commercial transaction and one that should be undertaken through the normal commercial process, which is negotiation and informed consent,” Mr. Gant said in an interview. Google and its partners are “trying to ram this through so that millions of copyright holders will have no idea that this is happening.”
Unlike most previous objections to the project, which focused on policy issues and recommended 
Scott Gantmodifications to the settlement, Mr. Gant argues that the agreement, which gives Google commercial rights to millions of books without having to negotiate for them individually, amounts to an abuse of the class-action process. He also contends that it does not sufficiently compensate authors and does not adequately notify and represent all the authors affected.
Legal experts said it could be the most direct attack on the agreement so far.
“It may be the most fundamental challenge to the settlement yet,” said James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, a critic of the agreement whose blog tracks filings and commentary related to it.
The court has set a hearing for early October.
Objections to the settlement have been raised by groups including the National Writers Union, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, representatives of the faculty of the University of California and the literary arm of the William Morris Endeavor entertainment agency.
The settlement has plenty of backers. Google and its former adversaries, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, who originally sued Google in 2005 in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, continue to promote its benefits, and say it does not create a monopoly. Some outside groups, including the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities and the National Federation of the Blind, have supported it.
The parties to the settlement, who had not seen Mr. Gant’s filing, dismissed his stand, saying that the agreement was an appropriate use of the class-action rules, that the Authors Guild fairly represented all authors and that those whose books might become part of Google’s database had been appropriately notified.
“It is not surprising that for something this big and interesting, there will be multiple viewpoints, including some critics,” said Daphne Keller, managing product counsel at Google.
“The rights holder has 100 percent control and choice,” said Richard Sarnoff, former chairman of the Association of American Publishers and co-chairman of the American unit of Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House. “If any author doesn’t want Google to be marketing or displaying their work, within 48 hours any of these works get pulled by Google.”
But Mr. Gant, who wrote “We’re All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age” and is filing the action on his own behalf, not his firm’s, insisted that class actions were never intended to establish the kind of licensing agreement that Google obtained.
Reader Comments (1)
That is not the case. Under the Google Book Settlement Agreement as it currently stands, authors of works in short forms - poems, essays, short stories, etc - published in multi-author collections may withdraw their works from display, but not from sale. See section 3.5(b)(i) and the Objection of Arlo Guthrie et al (http://thepublicindex.org/docs/objections/guthrie.pdf), p. 7.
Moreover, the agreement only binds Google to remove books "within thirty (30) days", not 48 hours.