Well, I see the Author's Guild has chastised Amazon.com for being against the Google deal. And Seven Seas Press is backing out of the deal it had with Google. Even foreign governments are voicing their concerns. All of this has made the judge consider the idea of pushing back deadlines for final hearings.

Should anyone be surprised?

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Nope. Either choice with the settlement pretty much was a bad deal, really rather a choice of which was the lesser evil. I hope the settlement is ruled against, and Google is forced to behave itself properly when it comes to copyrights and intellectual property.
“I didn’t opt out so I could sue. I opted out because getting $60 for each of my books, so that they could have unlimited use of the text, is a disgusting insult,” author Sturt Ross says. “I don’t want to ’settle’ with Google: I didn’t enter into negotiations with them to start with. I think the whole thing is a really terrible precedent.”
Although the deadline for opting out of the Google Settlement has passed, the issue remains contentious. Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights, testified about the Google Settlement today before the House Judiciary Committee. She said that the deal would "alter the landscape of copyright law" and would usurp the role of Congress. She said that the use licenses granted Google by the settlement are "acts of copyright infringement." John Conyers, who is chair of the Judiciary Committee, has been a strong supporter of the role of Congress in copyright issues in the past.
I hereby start an organization called "Soblek Guild of Writers." Although I'm the only member, I claim I'm going to represent all authors with a copyright. I'll settle with Google about using those copyrights. If you want part of the settlement, shoot me an e-mail and I'll give you a cut in exchange for Google using your copyright. If you don't get in touch with me to tell me you don't want to be a part of the settlement, I'll consider your lack of response as a "half yes" and tell Google it can "sample" your book.

This fictional scenario is what runs through my head every time I see the words "Author's Guild." The whole thing smells bogus. I am open to being swayed this settlement is good for authors, but I won't hold my breath.
Damn, Ben! I wished I'd thought of that!
I don't think this is terribly new. I'm waiting to hear the outcome of the rebellion against the Author's Guild settlement. And I hope the courts strike it and forbid Google to use anything without the author's permission. I got caught in the middle of this because my agent's office took Author's Guild's side in this and got rather stern about my opting out. I think I ended up accepting Google's limited use of the two books they had already grabbed and forbidding any future use of anything else I would ever write. I haven't been paid so far, but then the case is pending.

And Author's Guild ought to be ashamed of themselves to speak for authors who hadn't been consulted.
Amen, sister.
The whole deal flies in the face of copyright law as I understand it. Google cannot grab my work without my permission; if they can, anyone can--and I have no rights to my work whatsoever. Goodbye publishing as we know it, if that's the case. The Author's Guild is not authorized to negotiate on my behalf: I did not give them permission to do so. My decision not to "opt out" under their rules and within their time frame does not constitute consent. That said, my agent also advised me to go with it for the time being, mostly because they wanted to wait and see how it all shook out. But on principle the whole business rubs me entirely the wrong way, and it's my hope (and the hope of every other writer I've spoken to on this subject) that the "deal" will be tossed and Google books will be required to do what any other anthologizer has to do: seek individual permissions from every author whose work they hope to exploit.

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