UK literary agents have filed an objection to the deal, joining other international critics including the French and German governments, and also, on persuasive anti-trust grounds the US Department of Justice. I can't be bothered to link to the FT article about this – they will make you register if you haven't already, and if you have it will use up one of your free monthly chances to access the paper online.

However, the gist of it is contained in the following quote from Clive Gringras, the top technology and IP lawyer acting for the agents, who describes the agreement Google has struck with US publishers as an extra-territorial act:

“You then stand back and say: ‘Is it right and proper that we should
have one court, one day in New York determining the rights of the
authors of every single nation, and almost every single book ever
published?’”

According to the article, the submission to the New York court says British writers were not fairly represented in the settlement talks, received
insufficient notice of the deal, would find it harder than US
authors to monitor Google, and should not be counted as part of the agreement. I agree: I opted out of the deal ahead of the deadline, but my fabulous agent Sara Menguc had sent me enough information soon enough that I could decide what to do. Many non-US authors will not have had that chance.

My former colleague from the BBC Trust, Michael Hedley, has written an interesting review of Honest Signals by Alex (Sandy) Pentland for the forthcoming issue of The Business Economist. Pentland co-directs the Digital Life Consortium at MIT. I can't post the whole of Michael's review here, but here's an extract for people interested in this book about the ways we could use social networks for improved decision-making:

Pentland does present a persuasive and digestible logic on the power of unconscious reasoning, similar in some ways to Malcolm Gladwell’s more populist Blink, although critically the evidence seems to thin as group sizes increase. Rather vainly I welcome the idea that our innate reasoning may be more powerful than we realise. It is possible that we have become over-reliant on analysis post-Enlightenment. However, I would still be very reluctant to abandon rational schools of thought, particularly for critical decisions. Instead I think this work highlights how rational decision making could be enhanced, and it is warming to note that this means working together.