The German government on Tuesday became the first foreign administration to ask a US court to block a deal between Google and US authors and publishers about web access to old books, saying it would “irrevocably” weaken global copyright law.

In an amicus curiae – a brief filed with the court by someone who is not a party to the case – to a US federal court in Manhattan, Berlin warned the settlement would rob German and other non-US authors of ownership of their work and give Google “a de facto monopoly” over dissemination. The German government said its “concern” about the rights of German authors had been heightened by “the proposed settlement’s shroud of secrecy and hint of an uncontrolled, authoritarian concentration of power” in Google.