An Antitrust Assessment of the Google Book Search Settlement

Abstract

The Google Book Search settlement has prompted a flurry of attention from commentators, including a number of respected scholars who have worried that the settlement makes Google an 'orphan works monopoly.' In this paper I evaluate these claims and find them generally unpersuasive. The Google Book Search settlement expands, rather than diminishes, access to books of all sorts, and that is particularly true of orphan works.