Going Forward

In response to Judge Denny Chin's March 22nd ruling on the settlement agreement between the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google, Hilary Ware, Google's Managing Counsel said, “This is clearly disappointing, but we'll review the Court's decision and consider our options. Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open-up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the US today. Regardless of the outcome, we'll continue to work to make more of the world's books discoverable online through Google Books and Google eBooks.” Judge Chin rejected the settlement without prejudice, allowing Google to propose a revised settlement that answers the concerns of the previous.

Judge Chin's decision also doesn't negatively effect all of the Google Books project efforts so far. With the books Google plans on continuing to scan, in addition to negotiating deals with individual publishers, there are two million books on Google Books that are in the public domain and another two million books in copyright that are viewable because of deals Google has already made with publishers. The ruling does not effect the legality of these books.

Recommendations

There are several changes and choices Google has to make for them to achieve the mission of the Google Books project. One of the biggest complaints Google must deal with is that they are scanning books without the permission of copyright holders. In his ruling, Judge Chin suggested an opt-in model for copyright-holder that would solve this problem. Since Google has said that such a model isn't viable, Google may need to resort back to its original fair use defense. Rights-holders complained that Google was profiting from their work by offering advertisements alongside snippets of their books, but Google is protected under the same fair use principles that allow for authors to quote other sources and for a search engine such as Google itself to index the web. By taking a stance of fair use, Google could use its legal and financial power to set precedences for fair use in the digital age that no one but a company like Google could do. While publishers are more than willing to work with Google on a revised settlement, it might be better for the greater good for Google to defend its fair use rights than for it to try to create a revised settlement that would not be in everyone's best interest. Google must also lobby Congress to pass legislation on orphaned works since much of the opposition against the settlement agreement was over these works. Google needs for Congress to pass orphan works legislation that is favorable to efforts like the Google Books project if it wants to fulfill the goal of the project and work towards its mission of organizing the world's information.