Late Friday night the parties to the Google Book Search class action submitted a revised settlement agreement to the federal court in New York that is hearing the case.
Unfortunately, the parties did not add any reader privacy protections. The only nominal change was that they formally confirmed a position they had long taken privately that information will not be freely shared between Google and the Registry. Our partners at the ACLU of Northern California have a blog post describing the changes we, and the authors we represent, have demanded and continuing the call for readers everywhere to let Google CEO Eric Schmidt know that reader privacy should not be left behind as books move into the digital age.
The parties also asked for truncated notice and a rushed schedule with objections and opt-outs due on January 28, 2010 and a final fairness hearing on February 18, 2010. We'll be posting more about the revised settlement and the procedures going forward.
