Copyright Problems May Slow Digital Book Libraries

A court in Paris has found internet search giant Google to be in breach of French copyright law. La Martiniere, a French publisher, has been awarded 300,000 Euros (approximately $ 430,000) in damages and interest. Google must also pay 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until the book extracts are removed from its database. The French Publishers’ Association, La Martiniere and an author’s group initiated the action and had requested that Google be fined 15m Euros ($ 21m).

The size of the final settlement is trivial for Google – but there may yet be implications for Google’s plans to scan and make available online as many of the world’s books as possible. Google is currently in the process of scanning and digitising pretty much any book it can get its hands on. Out of copyright books are made available in their entirety. Books which remain in copyright either have snippets of them made available online or have the whole book made available under a 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.

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.

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 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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