Important information for any company considering digitizing information:
_______________________________________
A French court on Friday ruled that Google violated French copyright law in digitizing books, but it is unlikely the decision will be the last word on the search engine's controversial book-scanning project. A judge ordered Google to pay $430,000 in damages to French publisher La Martiniere, which pursued the case on behalf of a group of publishers.
In addition to the damage award, Google was ordered to pay a fine of $14,340, every day, until the company removes literary extracts from the publishers' books from its database. Google confirmed that the company will appeal the ruling. "We disagree with the judge's decision and will appeal the judgement," Google spokeswoman Gabriel Stricker said in a statement. "We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S.; and improves access to books." Google argues that French readers are the biggest losers, since they will not have access to a large pool of knowledge. "If readers are able to search and find books, they're more likely to buy and read them," Stricker said. The ruling is just the latest problem facing Google in the company’s attempt to digitize books around the world from libraries and other sources. Even though Google only provides excerpts from books in search results and does not provide whole works without permission, the company has still come under fire from publishers and authors in Europe and the United States. In the U.S., Google last year reached a settlement with authors and publishers who brought a lawsuit against the company for scanning books for its search index without permission from copyright holders. However, the deal is being renegotiated, because of opposition from the U.S. Justice Department.
Source: Lawday
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment