[A2k] AP: Paris Court Convicts Google in Copyright Case

[Claude Almansi]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Amy Kapczynski
<akapczynski@law.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> Anyone know what the result of this will be? =C2=A0Is Google supposed to
> block (some? all?) access to GBS texts in France -- =C2=A0and how? =C2=A0=
Would
> also love to see a copy of the judgment (in English, ideally...) if
> anyone comes across it.

I'd love to see it too.

Some background: At the hearing about the first version of the GBS
Settlement organized by the European Commission in September (see
<http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/copyright-infso/hearing_en.h=
tm>),
 librarians at European libraries who had let Google scan their books,
and the Google representatives themselves, specified that this was no
wholesale scanning (as the one in US), but that in European libraries,
Google only scanned books they were absolutely  sure were in the
public domain.

What La Martini=C3=A8re (and the other francophone publishers who joined
him in suing Google) objected to was that the wholesale US scan also
included in-copyright books published by them that were present in US
libraries.

About:


>(...)
>> Google's plans to scan millions of books to make them available online
>> has drawn criticism from publishers and libraries in both the U.S. and
>> Europe.

>From publishers, yes. But at least at that Brussels hearing, European
librarians present were enthusiastically supporting the Google scan,
just sorry about Google's caution in making sure it only scanned works
in the public domain.

>> Even if the case doesn't have much financial impact on Google
>> or force a big change in its book-scanning strategy, it is a reminder
>> that its ambitions are increasingly colliding with fears that the
>> company is getting too powerful.

That's true - but also with fears - particularly in many French
opponents to GBS -  due to a total incapacity to grasp Google's
business model and to even attempt to learn about it: so much more
comfortable to stick to prejudices like "GBS is an imperialistic
attempt to spread MacDonald culture". There are more insidious risks
inherent to Google's quasi monopoly - possibly in the contrary
capacity of Google to "go local".


Let's see what happens when Google appeals. And before that, what more
serious sources than a press agency will say about this judgment:
"...until it rids its
database of the literary extracts." doesn't make sense, it is as if AP
had cut part of the sentence.

Best

Claude