For all those leery of Amazon's increasing eBook market share, this should be a lot more disturbing: (from Ninjalawer's earlier link)
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The Amended Settlement Agreement does nothing to diminish Google’s unique position in relation to the exploitation of orphan works. However, it does change the institutional framework in ways that may become significant if orphan works legislation is ever enacted. Two ironies are worth considering here. The first irony of the settlement is that, whereas a fair use ruling would have substantially mitigated the orphan works problem for all potential entrants into the field of digital book searching, the Amended Settlement Agreement only solves that problem for Google—thus Google is better off compromising than winning in this respect.152 Indeed, it is Google’s potential orphan works monopoly that has attracted some of the sharpest criticism. Professor Pamela Samuelson argues that “the settlement would, in effect, give Google the exclusive right to commercially exploit millions of orphan books.”153 The Internet Archive, a non-profit organization founded to build an Internet library, also protests that the Settlement “effectively limits the liability for the identified uses of orphan works of one party alone, Google, Inc.”154 Professor James Grimmelmann concludes that “Google’s extraordinary market power under the settlement will come from its unique lock on orphan works.”155
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