BayNewser reports that Google (GOOG) announced they will allow third-party retailers to sell copies of the out-of-print books included in the pending Google Books settlement.
At the same time, executives from Google and Amazon (AMZN) are facing off in front of the U.S. House of Representative’s Judiciary Committee today, in a special “Competition and Commerce in Digital Books” hearing about the settlement. You can follow the proceedings live on Twitter, but testimony from a variety of sources–from the Authors Guild to the National Federation of the Blind–is posted on the committee’s website. Google’s chief legal officer, David C. Drummond, filed this testimony: “To oppose this settlement means depriving the public of learning, and punishing the parties to a lawsuit for resolving their private litigation in innovative and groundbreaking ways.”
Amazon.com’s VP of of Global Policy, Paul Misener, filed this testimony against his competitor: “Under the proposed settlement, ‘the next Google’ wouldn’t stand a chance, and customers of existing Google competitors would, instead of realizing the myriad benefits of market choices, find themselves at the mercy of a sole source provider. Under the proposed settlement, Google would become a consumer’s nightmare: the only store in town.”
