As for orphan works legislation, the Congress could well learn from the settlement. In particular, it covers only text orphans. I wonder if the Congress couldn’t pass a “books only” (text only) orphan works bill; the real fights over past efforts arose from the visual arts groups.

The opt-out date is past (went by on 4 September). That option is closed off now. There is no doubt that a great many writers even in the US, let alone worldwide, remained ignorant of the settlement’s implications (and even of the existence of the settlement) right up until the opt-out date, so that no meaningful choice was offered them at all.

“the ability to participate in the settlement and request different treatment of their works”

Authors of what the settlement agreement terms ‘inserts’ - shorter pieces such as poems, essays and short-stories published in multi-author collections - have very limited choices under the settlement agreement. They may choose to exclude their works from what the agreement calls ‘display uses’ (such as the display of pages in search results) but they cannot prevent Google from selling access to their works to libraries or private customers. Under copyright law, all works have the same protections, regardless of length or whether they are published in single-authored or multi-authored works. Under the settlement regime, not so. This is a fundamental shift.

“the Register’s intervention here sounds like the petulant complaint of one not invited to the settlement table”

The Register’s measured analysis sounds like good law to me.