The UK Booksellers Association has written a letter, calling the Google settlement a “monopoly” and telling British and Irish publishers to be as uncooperative as they can, and to “claim your titles and turn off all Display Uses pending a clearer vision of how the market for digital works will develop.”

BA head Tim Godfray complains that because anyone in the world will be able to download the books covered in the agreement, it will impact more than just the American signatories of the agreement — Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors’ Guild. However, because the BA has no standing in an American court, they can’t participate in the vetting of the settlement. “So,” he writes, “here we have a case of three organisations in the US making decisions that will affect not only booksellers in the US, but in the UK and other parts of the world. It is difficult not to take the view that Google are being handed a monoploy and competitors will be placed at a considerable disadvantage.”

He also noted that if British publisher don’t oppose the deal now, “In the longer term it will also be a question of ‘In the US today, in the UK tomorrow’, as Google is likely to try and introduce a similar agreement in Europe.”