Do Copyright Laws Need Updating To Cope With Ebooks?

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 Google must also pay an additional 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until the book extracts are withdrawn from Google's database.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 hardly the first time Google has found itself in hot water regarding their ambitious plan to become the world's digital librarian. A class action was filed against Google Books by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a number of individual authors and publishers in 2001. Google had, they alleged, breached copyright laws by scanning books from university libraries without getting permission from the copyright owners in some cases.

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 October of 2008 a deal was struck with Google establishing a $ 125 million fund to compensate authors whose works were made available online. However, the deal was applicable in North America only and raised problems with books which, whilst perhaps out of copyright in the USA, were still under 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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