Monday is the first day of fall. But no fear, we already have a guess as to what the legal theme of the upcoming season might be: the scrutinized and/or rejected settlement.

Of course, we’ve written a lot about the rejected settlement in the Bank of America/SEC matter, but another big settlement is getting an exceedingly close look prior to a hearing before New York federal judge Denny Chin on Oct. 7.

That settlement, which we’ve also written a bit about before (here and here), involves Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Over the weekend, the parties said they were hashing out what changes they are willing to make to the agreement following the Justice Department’s objections, formally articulated on Friday.

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When the US Copyright Office first heard about the proposed Google Books settlement, it found the idea a “positive development.” Then, after reading the fine print, it changed its collective mind, deciding instead that Google was really out to rewrite US copyright law through the courts.

Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, today explained to Congress (PDF) her office’s objections to what Google hoped to do:

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Last Friday, the deadline passed for formal comments from parties interested in the Google Book Settlement, but the flow of less-formal comments doesn’t seem to have abated. The settlement would turn the search giant into the gatekeeper for out-of-print books, and a variety of groups have now expressed concern for the sweeping changes it would allegedly make to the management of copyrights. This week, however, the focus has shifted to Europe, where Google has faced opposition from France and Germany that has prompted it to offer some concessions to local publishers.

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This Friday is the deadline for documents to be filed with the court that’s overseeing the Google book settlement, which will absolve the search giant from liability for its book scanning activities and set up an independent entity that will oversee the distribution of e-books from its digital stacks. Amazon, given its sales of both print and e-books, has joined a group that opposes the deal, but that hasn’t stopped it from filing an objection to it individually. Amazon’s lawyers spend over 40 pages arguing why that the deal should be rejected on copyright and antitrust grounds, while throwing in a very explicit admission that it’s bad for its business model.

The proposed settlement arose form a series of lawsuits that accused Google of violating copyrights via its book-scanning agreements with various libraries. The settlement would absolve the company of further claims and set up an independent body, the Books Rights Registry, which would oversee payments for authors arising from Google’s use of the works; the Registry would also have the right to license the digital library to commercial or private entities.

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