The great-sounding Google settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, for digitizing millions of copyrighted books on the Internet has met with yet another opposition - this time round from Germany!

The October 2008 settlement is already being scrutinized by the US Justice Department; and has been criticized by European authors and publishers, privacy advocates and others, on the grounds that the deal gives Google broad rights and immunities, thereby giving it an 'unfair' edge over other digital libraries.

In its late Monday court filing, the German government said that the agreement has been so drafted that it will not only "irrevocably alter the landscape of international copyright law", affecting the rights of German authors and publishers in the US; but also weaken "the traditional contours of internationally accepted copyright standards."

Moreover, noting that the agreement runs afoul of German laws, the German government said that though the settlement asserts its applicability only to actions in the US, even other countries will also not remain unaffected.

Germany's lawyer, Theodore Max, elaborated: "Once the database is posted, Internet users even in Germany will have access to the Google Books Search by using a freely accessible US proxy server. In other words, even if the digital book database is entirely localized within the United States, it will still be available for search requests from Germany."