Google have found themselves in deep water after being found guilty by a court in Paris, France of digitizing books without the permission of the authors. The plan by Google was to try to make all of the world’s information sortable and digital – but their latest try (which involves scanning millions of books into their archive) has been riddled with controversy.
Google loses French legal case over book digitization
At the heart of the argument is the question as to whether Google has the right to scan and use the extracts from books in its online searches. Some people believe that by making the texts of some literature available to people over the web, they are depriving publishers of the right to sell those books on to customers, which in turn will make those publishers lose profit.
Google does not agree, and they claim that they do not actually make the whole book available, just extracts which can be found in short snippets. They say that there is no difference between going to a library and reading through the archives there and checking online for a quotation from a printed book – it may even be better for the publisher if they make their books more available on the web.
The court was not convinced, however, and this leads to a bigger question – will Google’s quest to put all of the books in the world online fail due to the court actions of publishers across the globe? It is possible the benefit to Google of this experiment may start to be outweighed by expensive legal action and fines – and they could even consider slowing down or stopping entirely.