SAN FRANCISCO — After a flurry of last-minute filings on Tuesday, a federal judge must now begin untangling the mountain of competing claims about how a legal settlement granting Google the right to create the world’s largest digital library and bookstore would affect competition, authors’ rights and readers’ privacy.

The $125 million proposed settlement among Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American publishers, which is awaiting review by Judge Denny Chin of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, has prompted dozens of opposing filings from individuals, rival companies like Amazon and Microsoft, advocacy organizations, groups representing authors and publishers and even some foreign governments.

It has also received the support of companies like Sony, civil rights groups and some antitrust and economics experts in academia.

Legal scholars say that Judge Chin will have to address not only whether the settlement is fair to the authors, publishers and rights holders covered by it, but also whether it benefits the public at large.

“The number and quality of opposition filings is very unusual,” said Jay Tidmarsh, a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. “The court is going to have to look at the public interest in the settlement.”

The agreement, which would bring millions of rarely seen books online, has clear benefits to readers and authors. But scholars say the judge is likely to weigh those benefits against arguments that the settlement would limit competition. Opponents say it would give Google a quasi-exclusive license to profit from millions of out-of-print books and create a consortium that would have power to set prices for digital books. Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have vigorously disputed those claims, but the claims are being investigated by the Justice Department.

Opponents have raised other issues including contending that the settlement tramples on the rights of some authors and that it does not protect the privacy of readers. The court has the power to either approve or strike down the settlement, an option that would revive the lawsuits filed in 2005 by the authors and publishers against Google over its plan to digitize millions of books from libraries without authorization from rights holders. But if Judge Chin finds problems with the settlement, he could also offer the parties a road map for overcoming them.

“If the judge has some significant concerns, it is much more likely that he would invite the parties to address those concerns rather than reject the agreement,” said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. Professor Gavil said that Judge Chin was likely to give special consideration to the opinion of the Justice Department, which has until Sept. 18 to make its views known. A hearing on the settlement is scheduled for Oct. 7.

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NEW YORK—Charles Saatchi, the art collector and former advertising mogul, is famed almost as much for his reclusiveness as for his ability to jumpstart—or stall—artists’ careers. In a new book, My Name Is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic (out next month in the United States from Phaidon Press), Saatchi partially lifts the veil on his life by answering questions on topics ranging from his favorite artists to his influence on the contemporary-art market and other collectors to what makes him laugh.

Subtitled Everything You Need to Know About Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries—and Weren’t Afraid to Ask . . . and written in a question-and-answer format, the book reveals Saatchi to be by turns frank, humorous, mysterious, glib and sometimes downright opaque. For example, in response to the question “Why don’t you attend your own openings?” Saatchi responds, “I don’t go to other people’s openings, so I extend the same courtesy to my own.” According to a description of the book on the publisher’s Web site, the questions have all been put to Saatchi by “leading journalists and critics as well as by members of the public” over the years. However, none of these people are identified in the book. Even the question of why Saatchi, who typically refuses to be interviewed, has decided to answer such questions publicly now is not fully addressed. His response to the question “Why now?” is simply, “Now that I have the zeal of the newly converted, I feel compelled to proselytize.”

Saatchi and the BBC have plans for a reality television show documenting the U.K.-wide search for an artist who possesses the “talent, ambition and passion to make great art,” as it is described in a memo from Saatchi’s office. A panel including Kate Bush, Frank Cohen (known in Britain as “the Charles Saatchi of the North”), Matt Collings and Tracey Emin selected six undiscovered artists from more than 3,000 applications. The four-part series, which will be broadcast on BBC Two next month, will reveal which artist was selected by the panel and Saatchi to be included in the exhibition “Newspeak: British Art Now” at the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (Oct. 25–Jan. 17).

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Magnum photographer in talks with Tate and V&A over legacy of British documentary works

london. The British photographer Martin Parr is in talks to leave his collection of historic and contemporary British photos to the nation.

Parr, 57, a Magnum photographer known for his sardonic examinations of modern society, is also a collector and over the last 20 years has assembled an important survey of 700 British documentary photos and book dummies. This includes the work of around 18 practitioners, many of them collected in depth, which span the last five decades.

“I started collecting this material because no one was doing it as seriously as I thought it should be done,” said Parr. “In Britain we marginalise photography compared with mainland Europe, where its status is much higher.”

A selection of Parr’s documentary photos and photobooks is now on display at the Jeu de Paume in Paris (until 27 September) as part of an exhibition that also draws from Parr’s collections of postcards and other objects. The show travels to the Baltic in Gateshead next month.

It includes black and white works showing the English at leisure in the 1960s by Tony Ray-Jones, who Parr cites as an early influence, and images of Butlins holiday camps by John Hinde dating from 1968 to 1972.

The introduction of colour is surveyed with work by Peter Mitchell who produced the first significant show of colour photography in Britain in 1979.

The collection is particularly strong in works from the 1980s by the likes of Paul Graham, Chris Killip, and Graham Smith, who chronicled the industrial landscapes and poverty-stricken cities of Thatcher’s Britain.

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