I have been re-reading the Google Book Search class action settlement proposal that would, if passed, permit Google to sell access to the Books covered under the terms of the settlement. 

In additional to individual (consumer) sales, Google has the ability to sell institutional subscriptions that permit users within an institution to view the full text of all the books within the "Institutional Subscription Database" (ISD).  Access to the ISD is not perpetual but available only for the duration of the subscription.  Pricing for institutional subscriptions is based on the category of the institution and its size (predominantly measured by FTE count of the student body). 

As for most licensed content subscriptions, access is limited (in educational institutions) to faculty, students, researchers, staff members, librarians, other personnel, business invitees, and walk-in users from the general public.

One of the things that struck me as a notable presumption about institutional subscriptions relates to Google's desire to manage inappropriate behavior.  That's an understandable position --  how can they achieve that goal? 

In the STM content market that university libraries are most familiar with, a licensor will monitor usage and request intervention by the licensee if they notice that (for example) the last five volumes had been downloaded in their entirety over a period of 5 days from a single IP address.  In usual recourse, such an individual IP is denied access to the resource, and notice sent to the licensee's responsible party, often an individual in the library or consortial office.  That individual will then rectify the situation according to a well-practiced script.  

Since Google is set to establish institutional licenses along the same lines - and they've been steadily interviewing organizations who already license their content about best practices  over the last few months - you might think they would utilize similar arrangements.  But that's not the case. 

Let's take a look at a clause in 4.1(e) Institutional Subscription Terms and Conditions.

[...] (5) include the right for Google to restrict or terminate a user’s account, including additional restrictions on printing and copy/paste, if the user distributes the copyrighted material from a Book in a manner that is prohibited by the terms and conditions or applicable law ...  

Hmmm.  A "user's account" in an institutional subscription.  This suggests an authentication tied to specific identity.  In fact, Google also needs this capacity to police the limited class-based annotation functionality provided in the settlement, which in turn suggests the need to associate students with class registration information.   How would Googe implement an individual authentication and authorization model?

Do we imagine that Google will encourage the requisite and widespread deployment of Internet2's Shibboleth?  Ur, no, probably not.

Actively supporting OAuth and OpenID for Google Book Search so that individuals can use their Yahoo! or Facebook logins?  Hmm, probably not.

Support a diverse set of institutional IDs founded under wildly varying assumptions of affiliation and security, and often bifurcated by faculty & staff versus student status in fundamental profile characteristics such as account durability?  Possible, but difficult.

Requiring every individual member of an insitutional subscription to establish Google-held accounts?  Maybe.  Conceivably these could be Google Accounts for Education (GA4E) or Google Accounts for Your Domain (GA4YD).

In public concerns about privacy, some  imagine that our worst fears are that individuals will be tracked through cookies.  Rather, on an institutional basis, including in U.S. government agency subscriptions, it might well be the case that users have to establish Google accounts tied to institional boundaries to provide the kind of auditable transaction record and compliance regime specified by the settlement.  If that is the case, then not only will Google know what I've been reading, and what books I've been searching, but they could well correlate with certainty against my news subscriptions, my Google Map searches ... the list grows long.  

From an institution's perspective, would I (at a major research university) be ready to deal with the support requirements explaining that every user of GBS must create their own Google account (if where there is no GA4E, separate and distinct from their existing accounts), and that each individual user is in essence a party to a license under very different terms, potentially, than those governing access to other licensed resources?  

Many universities have previously turned away from Google Accounts for Higher Ed due to privacy concerns, including concerns relating to liability and identification of responsible parties in cases of private, State, or Federal legal action, including subpoena.  They now face winding up entering an unexpected set of relationships through an institutional license with Google. 

Now would be a good time to receive clarification about this issue.