Copyright Problems May Slow Digital Book Libraries

Internet search giant Google has been found guilty of copyright infringement by a court in Paris. French publisher, La Martiniere, was awarded 300,000 Euros ($ 430,000) in damages and interest. Google was also ordered to pay the sum of 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until it withdraws the book extracts from its database. The court hearing was initiated by the French Publishers’ Association, La Martiniere and SGDL – an author’s group – who demanded that Google be forced to pay 15m Euros ($ 21m).

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.

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.

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.

In addition to opposition from Europe, including both the French and German governments, Google also faces competition from Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo who support the “Open Book Alliance” being driven by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation which scans and digitises books. To date, they have scanned over half a million books, all of which are available free. Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, feels 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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