August 19th, 2009
Lawyer files a full-throated attack on Google Books deal
Lawyers and the New York Times are sitting up to take notice of a new “sweeping” objection to the Google Books deal. The objector is Scott E. Gant, an author and partner at the Washington law firm of Boies Schiller & Flexner. In an interview, he told the Times:
This is a predominantly commercial transaction and one that should be undertaken through the normal commercial process, which is negotiation and informed consent. [Google and its partners are] trying to ram this through so that millions of copyright holders will have no idea that this is happening.
Gant’s filing is important because it makes a full frontal attack on the settlement. Rather than trying to modify the deal, Gant says the deal is an abuse of class action law and fails to adequately compensate authors.
“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 Google/publisher point of view: “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.”
Gant says class actions are not intended to offer the kind of industry reset this one would. Good last words to Christopher Buckley:
Whenever I hear capitalism proclaiming noble motives, something makes me check my wallet.
