DOJ: Thumbs Down Again to Google Book Search

From PC World: In a big blow to Google's efforts to build a massive digital-books marketplace and library, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has come out against the revised agreement to settle copyright lawsuits brought against Google by authors and publishers.

Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) had hoped that by revising their original settlement agreement they would satisfy the concerns raised by the DOJ in September 2009 and be able to legitimize Google's book-scanning program.

While the DOJ commended the parties for substantially revising the complex settlement agreement in good faith, it was unequivocal in stating that the revision falls way short of addressing the problems the DOJ had identified in the original document.

In particular, the DOJ remains dissatisfied with the proposed agreement's use of the class-action mechanism and its validity under U.S. copyright and antitrust law.

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