Authors Guild Disagrees with Justice Department Stance on the Revised Google Books Settlement

In a memo to membership today, the Authors Guild disagreed with the U.S. Justice Department’s new stance on the revised Google Books Settlement–a new kink in Google’s quest to digitize millions of books online.

Yesterday the Department of Justice expressed reservations about the revised Google Books settlement. The department issued this statement: “the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Authors Guild memo: “The RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) won victory after victory, defeating Napster and Grokster with ground-breaking legal rulings … Nothing seems to drive innovation among copyright pirates as much as a defeat in the courts. That innovation didn’t truly abate until Apple came along with its iPod/iTunes model, making music easily and legally available at a reasonable price. By then, the music industry was devastated. All that couldn’t happen to the book publishing industry? Sure could.”

Read the complete memo after the jump.

The Authors Guild Memo

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