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Originally Posted by murraypaul
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Isn't that just the settlement that was rejected by the courts ages ago? If so, I'd hardly call that the current proposal.
More recently than that old thing is the lawsuit between the Writers' Guild and Hathitrust that "concluded" in 2012 (the Writers' Guild has since appealed). HathiTrust involved Google, the University of Michigan and several libraries digitizing millions of books and making them searchable. For the purposes of this conversation, it also involved an orphan works project; basically, HathiTrust would make a diligent search for a copyrightholder, but if no holder could be found then the full digital text would be made available.
The Writers' Guild alleged massive copyright infringement. The court found for HathiTrust and company and the judge wrote:
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I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses made by Defendants’ MDP [mass digitization project] and would require that I terminate this invaluable contribution to the progress of science and cultivation of the arts...
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So it seems as though the digitization of books and making them searchable is reasonably supported by current copyright law. The orphan works issue wasn't adjudicated in the above decision.
Interestingly, reading some author Amicus briefs related to the Authors' Guild's appeal, it seems like one of the main concerns is that some rogue agent could get into the digitized books database and distribute all of the books for free, causing a piracy-pocalypse. It's rather telling that they've resorted to arguing flights of fancy.