Google, the internet search giant, has been found guilty of infringing French copyright law by a court in Paris. French publishing house, La Martiniere, was awarded the sum of 300,000 Euros (equivalent to $ 430,000). Google must also pay an additional 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until the book extracts are withdrawn from Google’s database. The action was initiated by the French Publishers’ Association, as author’s group and La Martiniere.

Google won’t be too concerned about the size of the settlement – but the ruling may have a bearing on Google’s project to scan as much of the world’s books as possible and to make these available online. At the moment, Google is in the process of scanning as many books as it can. Books no longer covered by copyright law are made available in their entirety. Others covered by copyright may either have small sections made available online or have the entire book made available under an agreed licensing scheme.

Google’s project to establish a worldwide digital library has seen it in court before. In 2001, a class action was filed by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a number of individual publishers and authors who alleged that Google had breached copyright law by failing to seek the copyright holder’s permission in all instances prior to scanning books from university libraries.

Google claimed that it was complying with the principle of “fair use” as books which were scanned without the copyright holder’s permission had only short snippets made available.

A deal was agreed in October of 2008. Google established a fund of $ 125m to compensate authors whose work was made available online. However, the deal was only applicable in North America and there were still problems with books which, whilst perhaps out of copyright in the U. S., were still covered by copyright law in other countries.

As well as opposition from Europe, including both the German and French governments, Google faces competition from Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon – who all support the “Open Book Alliance” run by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation which is also in the business of scanning and digitising books. Over half a million books have been scanned and stored by the Internet Archive to date, all of which are available free online. The founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, is concerned that Google is attempting to monopolise the library system.

Google, quite reasonably, asserts that their Google Books project will make millions of books which are currently out of print available to readers worldwide. It’s also noteworthy that out of copyright books are available to Amazon Kindle reader users direct from Amazon’s website and that there are numerous other websites where free books can be found online, without any copyright infringement. Our reading habits, along with publishing methods, will change to take advantage of the internet and digital storage media. However, in order for this to be truly successful, a legal framework to protect the interests of copyright holders and authors will require to be put in place.

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