Deadline for Google Books Agreement Looms

With less than a week left for authors to opt-out of the Google Book Search Settlement, Vanityfair.com's Jennifer Massoni looks at the pros and cons of the $125 million class action settlement for authors and publishers whose works have been digitized by the search engine company.

Authors can choose not to participate in the settlement—giving up the small potential payouts of between $60 to $300 dollars—and reserve the right to sue Google on their own.

Massoni quotes one literary agent who says, "As far as I’m concerned, all of this is corrupt racketeering... Publishers like it because they’ll take money from anywhere. But it rips off the authors by interposing too many clueless intermediaries.”

The settlement has some powerful opponents. William Morris Endeavor has advised its clients to opt-out. Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo!—probably sensing Google's potential for digital book search domination—also opposed the settlement and have joined an advocacy group called the Open Book Alliance.

Another critic, Forbes.com's Steve Pociask, compares the settlement to a burglar cutting a deal to "use the stolen contents for as long as he wants, provided he pays each victim a one-time fee per item."

Google, for its part, is putting a typically utopian spin on their project. Sergey Brin, the company's co-founder and president of technology said in a statement, "While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips." And so will Google, which will probably make real wealth off that "wealth of knowledge" with its AdSense.

The deadline for copyright holders to opt-out is September 4.