http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/08/08/google-fair-use-and-settlement/ Information, Law, and the Law of Information Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:24:45 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/08/08/google-fair-use-and-settlement/comment-page-1/#comment-6639 Info/Law » Joyce Fair Use Settlement: Good and Bad News Sun, 25 Mar 2007 15:12:36 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2006/08/08/google-fair-use-and-settlement/#comment-6639 [...] This is great news for Shloss and for all Joyce scholars — the author’s estate has been notoriously litigous in the past. But I have to admit disappointment as well. This case was exciting precisely because it seemed like a good prospect to get some binding case law on the books about the scope of fair use for historians and literary scholars. A settlement doesn’t count as “the law” in the same way at all. (I have noted before the same fear about the prospect that Google would settle cases about indexing as fair use). This is the famous ethical quandary of all lawyers involved in “impact litigation” — you are using one person’s problems as a vehicle to change the law, but your first and greatest duty is to the client. Often, if you can get a great settlement, then you have to forego the larger-scale legal change you’d sought. [...] [...] This is great news for Shloss and for all Joyce scholars — the author’s estate has been notoriously litigous in the past. But I have to admit disappointment as well. This case was exciting precisely because it seemed like a good prospect to get some binding case law on the books about the scope of fair use for historians and literary scholars. A settlement doesn’t count as “the law” in the same way at all. (I have noted before the same fear about the prospect that Google would settle cases about indexing as fair use). This is the famous ethical quandary of all lawyers involved in “impact litigation” — you are using one person’s problems as a vehicle to change the law, but your first and greatest duty is to the client. Often, if you can get a great settlement, then you have to forego the larger-scale legal change you’d sought. [...]

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