Is no news good news? In a story at CNET today, reporter Tom Krazit reminds us that the Google Book settlement remains unsettled with no end in sight.

At the last hearing concerning the case in February, presiding Judge Denny Chin, then of the Southern District of New York, warned that he would not be making an instant judgment.

In April — as this report notes — the Hong Kong-born Chin was confirmed by the Senate as a federal judge of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals; commentators (such as, well, MobyLIves, here) have speculated that Chin’s new responsibilities may further delay his decision.

Among the most important questions at issue, one that may have broad implications for copyright law, is whether Google has the right to scan out-of-print books that are still protected by copyright. Google has proposed that authors and their publisher representatives may “opt-out” of the scanning and inclusion in Google’s planned digital library by notifying Google. Opponents counter that existing copyright law already explicitly prohibits unauthorized copying and that “opting out” puts a burden on the copyright holder that properly belongs to Google. As this Chronicle of Higher Education report notes, in a filing with the court, the Justice Department concluded that the settlement “purports to grant legal rights that are difficult to square with the core principle of the Copyright Act that copyright owners generally control whether and how to exploit their works during the term of copyright.”

Also contested is the exclusive advantage Google gains from the unauthorized scanning and inclusion of copyrighted materials in its library. Competitors Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are among those who have opposed the settlement. The Justice Department — as in this press release — contends that “the amended settlement agreement still confers significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on Google as a single entity, thereby enabling the company to be the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats.”