Antitrust Lawyer Slams Google Book Pact

Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback made his case against the Google Books settlement Tuesday, arguing that the settlement is illegal but could be remedied if the Justice Department insists that Google (GOOG) license the books it scanned to competitors.

In a court filing on behalf of the Open Book Alliance, a consortium that opposes the settlement, the attorney argues that the settlement between Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers gives publishers and Google monopoly control over the pricing of digital books. Reback, who was involved in spurring the Justice Department to bring an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s, co-founded the consortium along with the Internet Archive, a nonprofit that is trying to create a digital archive of the Web, last month. Many members of the consortium, including the Internet Archive, Amazon.com (AMZN), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), have filed their own briefs opposing the settlement too.

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