The Great Book Bank Robbery - Back to Congress?

The US Judiciary Committee Hearing on the proposed Google Book Settlement got a forcful and compelling statement from Marybeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights.
The submission can be read in full here.

Speaking about the settlement Peters submits the good that the settlement could bring with through a rights registry, providing access to the blind and print disabled, opening new shared advertising revenue and other potential income streams and also enabling libraries to offer on-line access.

However she submits,

… We realized that the settlement was not really a settlement at all, in as much as settlements resolve acts that have happened in the past and were at issue in the underlying infringement suits. Instead, the so-called settlement would create mechanisms by which Google could continue to scan with impunity, well into the future, and to our great surprise, create yet additional commercial products without the prior consent of rights holders. For example, the settlement allows Google to reproduce, display and distribute the books of copyright owners without prior consent, provided Google and the plaintiffs deem the works to be “out-of-print” through a definition negotiated by them for purposes of the settlement documhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifents. Although Google is a commercial entity, acting for a primary purpose of commercial gain, the settlement absolves Google of the need to search for the rights holders or obtain their prior consent and provides a complete release from liability. In contrast to the scanning and snippets originally at issue, none of these new acts could be reasonably alleged to be fair use…

… Rather, it could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come. We are greatly concerned by the parties’ end run around legislative process and prerogatives, and we submit that this Committee should be equally concerned…

Peters summarized,

… it is our view that the proposed settlement inappropriately creates something similar to a compulsory license for works, unfairly alters the property interests of millions of rights holders of out-of-print works without any Congressional oversight, and has the capacity to create diplomatic stress for the United States…