The New York Times noted Friday that some challenges are being raised to the Google Book settlement; my colleagues at The Recorder are more interested in the fact that some of the opposition is funded by Google's rival, Microsoft. One of the New York Law School professors whose research is funded by Microsoft is James Grimmelmann. I've never spoken to him, but his lengthy analysis of the Google Book settlement, published in November, is the most insightful thing I've read about it. After reading the post, it really struck me how important this settlement will be to the future of reading as we know it.
Grimmelmann is also a former Microsoft employee, and wrote a great essay about working for the company back in 1997. The law professor made it clear to the NYT that he doesn't believe he or his colleagues' work has been influenced by Microsoft. He generally supports the settlement but also noted that he had concerns about antitrust and consumer rights, and suggested:
The Department of Justice, and at least and one of Google’s potential
competitors in book scanning (Microsoft, which has previously had a
book-scanning project, is a natural choice) should move to intervene to
raise the antitrust concerns. The FTC should move to intervene to raise
the consumer-protection issues. And some unnamed members of the author
class should object to the settlement unless it is modified to take
account of the remaining issues.
Looks like at least some of that is underway. But those who want a fuller understanding of what this settlement could mean would really do well to read the whole post.
Photo: A. Dunn via Wikimedia
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