Internet search giant Google has been found guilty of infringing French copyright law by a court in Paris. French publishing house, La Martiniere, received 300,000 Euros ($ 430,000) in damages and interest. Google was also required to pay a fee of 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until the book extracts are removed from its database. The court hearing was instigated by the French Publishers’ Association, La Martiniere and SGDL – an author’s group – who had asked that Google be fined 15m Euros ($ 21m).
The size of the final settlement is trivial for Google – but there could yet be repercussions for Google’s project to scan and make available online as many of the world’s books as it can. At the moment Google is in the process of scanning and digitising as many books as it can get its hands on. Out of copyright books are made available in their entirety. Books which in copyright either have snippets of them made available online or have the complete book made available under a licensing scheme.
It’s not the first time Google has found itself in hot water regarding their ambitious plan to become the world’s digital librarian. A law suit was filed against Google Books by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a number of individual authors and publishers in 2001. Google had, they alleged, broken copyright regulations by scanning books from university libraries without getting prior approval from the copyright owners in certain cases.
At the time, Google claimed that it was operating under the “fair use” principle as only brief sections of books scanned without the permission of copyright holders were made available.
In2008 a deal was struck with Google setting up a $ 125 million fund to compensate writers whose works were made available online. However, the deal was applicable in North America only and there were still problems with books which, although out of copyright in America, were still under copyright law in other countries.
In addition to opposition from Europe, including both the French and German governments, Google now faces pressure from Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo who support the “Open Book Alliance” being operated by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation which is also involved in scanning books. Up to now, they have scanned in excess of 500,000 books, all of which are available free. Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has voiced his concerns that Google appears to be attempting to monopolise the library system.
Google asserts that their system will make millions of out of print books, which would otherwise be inaccessible to most readers, available. Users of the Amazon Kindle reader also have access to out of copyright free Kindle ebooks via Amazon’s Kindle store and there are a number of other programs which make certain books available at no charge online. It does seem likely that our reading habits will change and the method of both book storage and delivery will be updated for the digital age. However, before this can take place it will be necessary to make certain that suitable legislation is in place and that author’s and other copyright holders are protected.
