The February 18 fairness hearing on the revised settlement in the Google Books lawsuit has come and gone, and the world now waits for word from Denny Chin, the federal judge in charge of the case. It could be a long wait. At the Association of American Publishers meeting held in Washington this week, there was talk that we might not hear from the judge for a couple of months. (He could issue a ruling anytime, of course.)
One question on the minds of everyone following the settlement is : What happens after the judge rules? Jonathan Band, a specialist in technology law and policy, has created a nifty chart of possible paths the settlement might take, depending on what Judge Chin decides. Called “GBS March Madness: Paths Forward for the Google Books Settlement,” the chart lays out a many-branched tree of appeals or litigation, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
In a note, Mr. Band points out that even a chart as complex as his does not lay out all the possible twists and turns the case could still take. “For example, it does not mention stays pending appeals nor whether litigation would proceed as a class action,” he writes. And it doesn’t talk about why Judge Chin might reject or accept the deal, or whether Congress might step in at some juncture.
“In short, the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament,” Mr. Band observes. Even if we do get a decision from Judge Chin this month, “many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute.”
(Hat tip: ResourceShelf.)
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4 Responses to The Google Book Search Case: March Madness Edition
d_fevens - March 6, 2010 at 6:32 am
The settlement does not hold Google & Company (the libraries that supply it with in-copyright works i.e. the University of Wisconsin) responsible for what I and many others the world over feel was the theft of our property. I have opted out of the settlement. If you are interested, James Grimmelmann has posted a first hand account of the fairness hearing to his Laboratorium [ Fairness Hearing Report and Fairness Hearing Report Part II ]. His account also makes a handy index to the transcript of the hearing found at the Public Index. [a href="http://thepublicindex.org/docs/case_order/fairness-hearing-transcript.pdf">Transcript of Fairness Hearing]Douglas Fevens,Halifax, Nova Scotia,The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me
d_fevens - March 6, 2010 at 6:36 am
Transcript of Fairness Hearing
seawall - March 6, 2010 at 9:48 am
Jess,I worked with Jon at MoFo. Here are the links for the website to the chart — which reveals a fair amount about Jon. You should keep an eye on him if you’re going to be involved in computer issues over the long haul. The chart can be found below:http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/gbs-march-madness-diagram-final.pdfJon's website: http://www.policybandwidth.com/summary.html
mbelvadi - March 7, 2010 at 12:25 pm
That chart is amazing! This is the kind of complexity parties have to deal with when they try to resolve major issues through the judicial branch of government, due to the failure of the legislative branch of government to address the issues. The issue in this case is the orphan works problem. Bills have been introduced, so it’s not like Congress hasn’t had a chance to deal with it, but they’ve avoided resolving the problem, hence the class action settlement.