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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 Google must also pay an additional 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until the book extracts are withdrawn from Google’s database.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.

The size of the final settlement is not important for Google. However, the ruling may impact upon Google’s plans to scan, and make available online, as much of the world’s literature as it can. Google is currently in the process of scanning and storing as many books as possible. Books which are out of copyright are made available in their entirety, books still covered by copyright either have “snippets” made available or have the whole book made available under a previously agreed licensing scheme.

It’s not the first time that Google has had to go to court regarding their plan to make books available in a digital library. The Author’s Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a number of independent publishers and individual authors filed a class action against Google in 2001. They alleged that Google had breached copyright law by digitising books from university libraries without, in some cases at least, seeking the consent of the copyright holders.

At the time, Google claimed that it was operating under the “fair use” principle as only short snippets of books scanned without the permission of copyright holders were made available.

In 2008 an agreement was reached with Google establishing a $ 125 million fund to provide compensation for authors who had their works made available online. However, the deal covered North America only and there were still concerns regarding books which, whilst out of copyright in America, were still bound by copyright law in other parts of the world.

Over and above opposition from Europe, including the governments of both France and Germany, Google now faces competition from Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, all of whom are now supporting the “Open Book Alliance” operated by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive - a non-profit based organisation - is also involved in the scanning of books. Up to now, they have scanned more than half a million books. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, has expressed his concern that Google may be attempting to monopolise the library system.

Google points out that their project will make millions of currently out of print books, which otherwise be inaccessible to readers, available. It’s probably also worth noting that Amazon Kindle users can also download out of copyright ebooks for the Kindle direct from Amazon’s website. There are a number of other projects which make out of copyright books available online free. It seems probable that our reading habits are about to undergo a major change. The current methods of book storage and delivery will be brought up to date using the internet. However, in order for this to succeed, it will first be necessary to put a legal framework in place which protects the interests of authors and copyright holders.

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