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Originally Posted by squawker
I see this as a huge loss for the public. Who does it benefit to shut off online access to orphaned works? Just because no other company has the ability to provide such access doesn't mean that Google should be barred by law from providing such access.
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They're not, yet; they're just not allowed to profit from offering that access in quite the way they wanted.
For "who does it benefit"--owners of orphaned works, who might like to reclaim their rights and might not know how. The settlement allows Google to profit from their works without any requirement that Google even look for them. Who also benefits: other companies that might like to figure out a way to offer orphaned works to the public.
Yes, it'd be nice to have access to those works. But the way copyright law currently is set up, it's illegal to just start selling someone else's work without permission, even if you don't know if they'd object or not. And the settlement allows Google--but no other companies--to do exactly that.
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If Google doesn't serve this niche, no one will, and now they have their hands tied.
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They & the authors' guild have the option of coming up with something else, that's a bit less of an end-run around copyright law, and less close to establishing Google as an international monopoly on orphaned works.