The settlement also would have made it possible for people and institutions to buy online access to the books through individual purchases or subscriptions. Revenue would also have been generated from Google's online ads.

The agreement proposed creating an independent, nonprofit entity called the Book Rights Registry to locate copyright owners and compensate authors and publishers for access to their works via a royalty system.

The proposal drew boos from a wide variety of quarters, including the U.S. Department of Justice, which recommended that the court reject the proposal and a subsequent revision that narrowed the agreement's scope in various ways, including geographically.

Also opposed to the proposal were Google competitors like Amazon and Microsoft, respected legal experts, well-known authors and publishers from the U.S. and abroad, some legislators and scholars.

Some arguments against the proposal were that it would give Google too much control over the books and their prices, especially the so-called "orphan works," whose copyright owners can't be located and which are often out of print. The DOJ specifically questioned the proposed settlement's compliance with U.S. antitrust and copyright laws.