A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

The massive Google Book Scanning scheme, and the Google attempt to force a publishing contract onto all authors and their out of print or “orphaned works,” has not met with the approval of the US Department of Justice.

“The amended settlement agreement still confers significant and possibly anti-competitive advantages on Google as a single entity,” the DOJ said.

It said that the agreement would allow the Google to be “the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats”.

Thank you to Miki for being the first of many to send me the news.

At PC World, this interesting tidbit, in case anyone is still unclear as to what all this is really about:

Google Inc. called off its proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo just three hours before the U.S. Department of Justice was to file an antitrust complaint on Nov. 5 aimed at blocking it, according to the lawyer that the government hired to pursue the case.

In an interview with the legal blog AMLaw Daily published Dec. 2, Sanford Litvack – the attorney who would have been the lead counsel on the antitrust case – said that Google and Yahoo decided to abandon the proposed deal shortly after DOJ officials informed them of the agency’s plans to file the antitrust complaint.

Also of interest: Google appeals the French court’s decision over its rejection of Google’s scanning scheme.

The tribunal ruled that by scanning entire books or excerpts and putting them on line, “Google has committed acts of copyright violation to the detriment of Le Seuil” and two other publishers.