Today is the Deadline for a Revised Settlement in Google Books Case

UPDATE: A few minutes before the midnight E.T. Friday deadline for submission of the revised GBS settlement, the AP is reporting that it has been filed and contains the following changes: The settlement will apply only to books published in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia; Google's overall control over millions of titles will be "loosened;" and copyright holders would apparently retain more rights than under the original proposed settlement.
Today is the deadline set by a federal judge for a revised settlement of a major class action lawsuit brought by groups representing some authors and publishers against Google for its ambitious book-scanning project.

In order to appreciate what's at stake, try to imagine a free* global digital library containing almost every book and magazine article ever published. That is essentially what Google co-founder Larry Page has been dreaming to create ever since his student days over a decade ago at Stanford.

Now that he and his co-founder Sergey Brin run one of the most successful companies in the world, they may actually have the resources to make this dream come true.

Thus, over the past few years, in partnership with some of the leading academic libraries here and in the U.K., Google has been scanning millions of books, turning them into searchable digital units that anyone anywhere can access at Google Books.

This effort has recently become mired in controversy, however, as a broad coalition of academics, librarians, and activists have become concerned that the search giant may be in the process of creating a virtual monopoly over the emerging market for eBooks.

In broad terms, those opposing the first settlement of the lawsuit insist that:

• The settlement shouldn't grant Google an exclusive corporate license over digital books (monopoly).
• Authors and other rights-holders need to retain the ability to approve the way their work is used by Google.
• The rights of librarians, researchers, and non-commercial users must be protected.
• The privacy of an individual's personal book-reading habits must be protected.
• Congress must retain the authority to set copyright policy in the digital age.
• Books whose rights-owners are unknown or can't be located must receive special protection, and renewed efforts made to identify them.

In response to the controversy (and legal actions) that has surrounded their book-scanning project, Brin recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, defending his co-founder's dream, calling it a "Library to Last Forever."

In his piece, he pointed out that "the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries."

There's no way to know yet how far the revised settlement due today will go to answering Google's critics, but it seems likely that the foreign objections, at least, will be addressed, and there probably will be some attempts to address most of the other points, as well.

In the end, the judge will have to weigh the concerns over who controls which rights, worries over anti-trust and privacy, etc., against the prospect that this "Library to Last Forever," might otherwise never get built at all.
* A portion of each eBook will be free, but under pending litigation, you probably will have to pay to gain access to the entire content of most books and articles in Google's digital archive.
Related Bnet Media Links: Sergey Brin Defends Google's "Library to Last Forever" The Google Book Case Settlement is Dead DoJ Intervenes Against Google Book Search The Bottom Line of Google Book Search Google's Chief Engineer Explains the Book Search Initiative Google Offers Free Downloads of a Million Books The Google Book Search Case -- for Dummies