Internet Archive Founder Questions Google Books Settlement

Will the settlement agreement between Google’s Book Search Library Project and authors and publishers put Google (GOOG) in monopoly territory?

That’s the argument that Brewster Kahle, co-founder of the Internet Archive, made in an op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he writes that the settlement “provides a new and unsettling form of media consolidation.”

Google’s book-scanning project drew outcry and a class-action lawsuit from the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers, who said the Internet company was violating copyright laws by scanning copyrighted works. A settlement agreement was reached in October of 2008 which would allow publishers and authors to share Google’s profits from the sale of digital versions of copyrighted works. The deadline for plaintiffs to object to or opt out of the settlement was recently extended to Sept. 4, 2009.

Read the rest of this post on the original site