That was a nice turnaround. The earlier decisions by Chin had me thinking he had already decided for the Authors Guild (so tempted to say AG there but that reads 'attorney general' sigh).
Now the next question is whether or not the Authors will come back to the table in being willing to let Google give them money for selling an out of print scan of their book to someone. That should be a no brainer "hey money you would not otherwise get!" but as we've seen there is never enough free money to make it worthwhile.
As much as I desperately want out-of-print books to be available, I really didn't like that court case. The idea of a small group of authors being allowed to negotiate away the rights of authors everywhere to one party only (Google) is absurd.
This is something that really needs legislative action.
"Chin also rejected the theory that Google was depriving authors of income, noting that the company does not sell the scans or make whole copies of books available."
I don't see how this would make out of print books available. It would only allow them to come up in a search result.
I don't understand why. Any other company now (presumably) has the right to digitally offer out of print books too. No one else wants to do it, either out of lack of motivation, cost or potential revenue. You can't blame Google for that, this is a massive step forward for society.
It's not really a win for free markets if you now need to legislate.
This outcome allows everyone to digitize out-of-print books, whereas the settlement would have granted Google a monopoly on them in exchange for a fee to the Authors' Guild.
That's why this decision is about a million times better than the settlement that was shot down years(!) ago. The settlement would have given Google a monopoly on the digitization of orphan books. A ruling sets a precedent that anyone can cite.
Now the next question is whether or not the Authors will come back to the table in being willing to let Google give them money for selling an out of print scan of their book to someone. That should be a no brainer "hey money you would not otherwise get!" but as we've seen there is never enough free money to make it worthwhile.