• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, September 10, 2009

Congress doesn't have the power to intervene in private lawsuits, but members of the House Judiciary Committee didn't let that stop them from holding a hearing this morning about the proposed settlement in the Google book search case.

A host of commenters weighed in on whether the deal between Google and authors and publishers would pose a threat to competition. Among those who opposed the settlement in Congress were Amazon, the U.S. Copyright Office and advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

One of the biggest topics of contention centers on orphan works -- books under copyright, but whose owners can't be found. Currently, no one can publish these books without fear of copyright liability. The deal would change that by immunizing Google from infringement actions for digitizing and selling such books.

That provision would obviously benefit readers, who otherwise are limited to tracking down out-of-print books at used book stores or public libraries. On the other hand, it also gives Google a big advantage over other publishers, who could still face astronomical copyright damages -- up to $150,000 per infringement -- for printing the books.

Google's chief legal officer David Drummond attempted to address this issue by announcing today that the company will allow any book retailer to sell online access to out-of-print books and keep a big chunk of the revenue.

It's probably too early to assess that concession given that details are still scarce. But Google likely isn't endearing itself to lawmakers by springing that sort of news on them at a hearing rather than giving witnesses time to digest it and prepare a response.

Meantime, if lawmakers are concerned about making orphan works available to the public, they are uniquely situated to solve this problem. After all, it's Congress -- not Google or Amazon -- that can fix the orphan works problem by revising the country's copyright laws.