The US Department of Justice has added yet another filing to the growing pile of documents that have been produced in response to impending legal action on the Google book settlement. While the DOJ accepts that the settlement may perform a public good by restoring access to out-of-print works, its filing highlights many of the same antitrust and copyright concerns that have been raised by others. As such, it recommends that the settlement be rejected in its current form, while providing a series of suggestions to guide further negotiations by the interested parties.

We’re closing in on the one-year anniversary of the deal’s initial announcement, and the time for public comment on the settlement recently wrapped up. The court overseeing the case received filings from a wide spectrum of rightsholders, privacy advocates, and Google’s competitors, and it will take those into account before announcing an initial ruling on the proposed settlement, which it plans to release early next month. Meanwhile, Google and the parties it’s settling with have continued to amend their initial agreement in response to criticism.