Google to Defend Book Settlement Before House Judiciary Committee Today

Google's Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, will be quizzed by the full House Judiciary Committee this morning as will be Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild. The speaker list also includes Paul Misener, Vice President of Global Policy, Amazon.com, and Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights. ZDNet Government's Richard Koman writes "the speaker list seems to me a bit heavily weighted to the Google forces, but perhaps that is so the congressmen can tell the dealmakers what they think."

Meanwhile U.S. District Judge Denny Chin and his clerks have plenty to read before the Oct. 7 Fairness Hearing. More  than 60 groups and individuals have filed objections to the Google Book Settlement. See 11th-Hour Filings Oppose Google’s Book Settlement (New York Times) and Google May Have to Modify Book Settlement for Judge’s Approval (Bloomberg). For a summary of one objection, see Microsoft: Google Books is illegal 'joint venture,' not settlement (ZDNET Government).

On Fairness Hearings.Hat tip to to Alexandra Lahav (Connecticut) on Mass Tort Litigation Blog for calling attention to William Rubenstein's The Fairness Hearing: Adversarial and Regulatory Approaches, 53 UCLA L. Rev. (2006) [SSRN]. [JH]