Will the settlement agreement between Google’s Book Search Library Project and authors and publishers put Google (GOOG) in monopoly territory?

That’s the argument that Brewster Kahle, co-founder of the Internet Archive, made in an op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he writes that the settlement “provides a new and unsettling form of media consolidation.”

Google’s book-scanning project drew outcry and a class-action lawsuit from the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers, who said the Internet company was violating copyright laws by scanning copyrighted works. A settlement agreement was reached in October of 2008 which would allow publishers and authors to share Google’s profits from the sale of digital versions of copyrighted works. The deadline for plaintiffs to object to or opt out of the settlement was recently extended to Sept. 4, 2009.

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The FBI has backed down on a secret request for information about a user of the Internet Archive digital library, thanks to a legal challenge from two prominent advocacy groups. The case, which was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the archive, dates to last year but only became public on Wednesday. That’s because the type of request involved, known as a national security letter, is accompanied by a gag order that forbids the recipient from disclosing its existence or discussing it with anyone except his attorneys, who are also gagged. As a result of a settlement, the FBI agreed to withdraw the national security letter and to lift the gag order.

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