SiliconBeat

A federal judge on Tuesday postponed a hearing to determine the fairness of the Google book settlement, a landmark court case involving Google and a group representing the nation’s authors and publishers.
U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin said in a ruling that he was moving the date of the fairness hearing from June 11, 2009 to October 7, 2009. He said he would also extend the deadline for authors and publishers to opt-out of the settement from May 5, 2009 to September 4, 2009.
A group of authors that included the son of John Steinbeck and musician Arlo Guthrie had requested the four-month extension, saying they needed more time to consider the settlement. In an interview, Gail Knight Steinbeck, chairperson of the Creative Property Rights Alliance, said she didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity represented by the settlement but that she was also concerned that the deal could help Google assemble a monopoly over information that included books, movies and music.
The settlement provides a mechanism for Google to compensate authors and publishers for including digital copies of their work in a giant database. It also gives Google a license to copy works whose copyright was previously considered in dispute — so-called orphan works that appeared to have been abandoned by owners of their copyrights.
An increasing number of authors, copyright specialists, academics, law professors and public interest groups have expressed opposition to the 134-page settlement, saying that it goes to far. “It is clear to us that the settlement, if approved, wilil shape the future of reading, research, writing and publication practices for decades to come,” Professor Pamela Samuelson of University of California, Berkeley School of Law, wrote in a April 27 letter to the judge. Samuelson asked for a six-month extension.
Neither Google nor the Author’s Guild and the Association of Americna Publishers, which had sued Google for copyright violations, objected to the extension.
“The extension will give class members additional time to consider their options,” said Joanne Zack, an attorney for the Author’s Guild.
A Google spokesperson said in a statement that it wanted to make sure “rights holders everywhere have enough time to think about it and make sure it’s right for them.”