Google Found Guilty of French Copyright Infringement

adeelarshad82 writes "A Paris court on Friday found Google guilty of violating copyright by digitizing books and putting extracts online, following a legal challenge by major French publishers. The court found against Google after the La Martiniere group, which controls the highbrow Editions du Seuil publishing house, argued that publishers and authors were losing out in the latest stage of the digital revolution."

Comments

Yeah, but it's France....

[Itninja]

Google should fight. Or, better yet, just threaten to fight. If the past is any indication, the French will surrender.

Re:Yeah, but it's France....

[Aardpig]

Yep, same as the US going into Indochina after someone had warned them of a quagmire. Now who was it who warned them? Oh yes, the French!

Re:Yeah, but it's France....

[techno-vampire]

and then forcing us to put Eggs on our pizzas.

Have you ever tried putting some eggs on a pizza just before it goes into the oven? If not you should; it's great!

Re:Yeah, but it's France....

[Monkeedude1212]

I refuse. There are some things an Egg is good for. Pizza is not one of them.

No, this is not my opinion, this is scientific FACT. Don't make me cite a source.

_Some_ US authors and publishers

[John Hasler]

...It agreed to a settlement with US authors and publishers...

It agreed to a settlement with some US authors and publishers. Most authors were not involved.

I don't get it

[vectorious]

I would have thought that extracts of books on Google would be the best possible advertising that you could have for a book - you do a search, and find a useful extract from a book, naturally you want to know more, but google won't give you any more, so you follow the handy advertising link at the side and buy it off Amazon - everyone wins.

I cannot believe that google extracts are in any way damaging book sales, and therefore causing harm to the authors or publishers.

So what are they complaining about?

Re:I don't get it

[Monkeedude1212]

So what are they complaining about?

I'm not sure, but I think one of the extracts included something about Snape killing Dumbledore.

The French were quite upset.

Re:I don't get it

[Hatta]

French publishers have bit the hand that feeds them. The obvious solution is for Google to no longer digitize French books, and laugh as people buy less of them.

Re:I don't get it

[nacturation]

The effectiveness of a particular promotional channel is irrelevant if the act itself is illegal.

Really impressive

[bdunogier]

Hi ! French / Frog / Egg eater (pick the one you like the most) here :) While I'm also a bit annoyed by this decision, they still have a point... but this is not what I wanna debate here. Even though I try to get the funny parts of most comments here, I am still extremely impressed by how you guys can look down on people you probably haven't ever spoke with (frenchies I mean), probably based on what you can see/read in the medias. Yes, most frenchies do look down on you the same way, but as slashdot users, who pretend to be part of the "internet revolution", which as far as I see it should provide all of us with accurate, real information standard, main stream media wouldn't provide us with. Really ironic. And yes, I do think the same about a good proportion of my fellow frenchies. No offense indended here, though.

Re:Really impressive

[Locke2005]

1) It hard to "speak with people" who insist that everyone speak perfect French or be subject ridicule, especially when you don't speak French.
2) From what I have heard, the country French are a very hospitable people, warm and willing to share their culture with the world. It is really only the Parisians that have a (deserved) reputation for being arrogant. Unfortunately, Paris is the only part of France that most people ever visit.
3) The Quebecois have earned some degree of disrespect since their insistence on the use of French goes far beyond "bi-lingualism" and may be regarded by some as discriminating against the majority English-speaking Canadians.
In general, France was once a big global superpower; France was once the center for tecnology, and French was the "Lingua Franca" used in diplomacy throughout the world. The French appear more than a little pissed off that this is no longer true. However, this just gives us a preview of the kind of attitude we will be getting from the Americans in a few years when China becomes the economic and technological center of the world. If you thought the French were acting like arrogant assholes before, just wait 'til you see what the Americans act like!

Re:Really impressive

[dropadrop]

1) It hard to "speak with people" who insist that everyone speak perfect French or be subject ridicule, especially when you don't speak French.

I've been to France quite often, and on most of my visits I did not speak a word of French. I was never subject to any ridicule, but I never expected anyone to speak more English or Finnish then I spoke French. I understand somebody could have bad luck and meet an asshole, but if everybody you meet are assholes you should look in the mirror for a cause.

2) From what I have heard, the country French are a very hospitable people, warm and willing to share their culture with the world. It is really only the Parisians that have a (deserved) reputation for being arrogant. Unfortunately, Paris is the only part of France that most people ever visit. 3) The Quebecois have earned some degree of disrespect since their insistence on the use of French goes far beyond "bi-lingualism" and may be regarded by some as discriminating against the majority English-speaking Canadians. In general, France was once a big global superpower; France was once the center for tecnology, and French was the "Lingua Franca" used in diplomacy throughout the world. The French appear more than a little pissed off that this is no longer true. However, this just gives us a preview of the kind of attitude we will be getting from the Americans in a few years when China becomes the economic and technological center of the world. If you thought the French were acting like arrogant assholes before, just wait 'til you see what the Americans act like!

My findings with modern young french people is that most of them do actually speak some English (mind you this is just Paris I'm talking about). However they are very ashamed to try as they are very bad at it. I don't know if it's really due to the way most native French speaking people play with words in a way you can't really do with English and it makes their attempts feel even worse, but that's the feeling I got. Anyway, I've found that after making a total fool out of yourself trying to communicate with your hands and bad french almost everybody suddenly speaks English...

Re:Really impressive

[thetoadwarrior]

1) It hard to "speak with people" who insist that everyone speak perfect French or be subject ridicule, especially when you don't speak French.

You mean like the numerous Americans and English who mock immigrants who don't speak perfect English even though the immigrant knows two or three languages and the native English speaker can only (if lucky) manage one?

Re:Still better than the CRIA

[Arancaytar]

I cannot help but smile at the karmic deliciousness of a "RIA" organization being sued for billions for infringement.

Found?

[sexconker]

Google wasn't found guilty. They were openly, admittedly, unabashedly guilty of digitizing and putting up excerpts of books they did not hold ANY copyright to.

They only thing that happened was that the court decided the this law is valid even for a mega corp like Google.

THAT, my friends, is the real shocker.

And all you Googlebots can bitch about the law all you want, that's fine. Get the laws changed (in France, here, wherever). But Google brazenly did shit that was completely illegal. I am glad they got hit for it.

Corporations should NOT be above the law.

Re:Found?

[Overzeetop]

I absolutely agree, sort of. What this will likely do, however, is force a settlement between Google and the French publisher for the rights...and I don't think it will go in the publishers favor.

See, Google has gotten us addicted to information. Easy searching. The world at our fingertips. What happens when Google pulls the plug on all French language sites, citing the French interpretation of the right to excerpt for search reasons? People are going to have a fit over it. Somebody is going to have to give, and I suspect France is a relatively small proportion of Google's revenue - at least compared to Google's share of the French search engine mindshare.

Of course, they won't be all confrontational like that - they'll be far more political. I don't see Google actually "losing".

Re:Found?

[fermion]

It would seem better we had a compulsory license fee on book so that google, or whomever, could pay a fee for unit of book copied/scanned/duplicated. Then there would be a fee for each page served.

But this is not the case, and google is testing how far it can push the copyright laws to enhance it's business position. Many firms do this. MS did this. I don't like Google doing this because they are not trying to open information. Rather, they are trying to control information so that eyeballs have to view ads brokered by Google.

However, my like or dislike is not relevant. What is relevant is that google is the method many people use to find information. What is relevant is that France is a tiny little country with a language that diminishing number of people speak, and diminishing influence. Many schools in the US are more likely to teach Russian or German or Japanese rather than French. There was a time when France actively tried to fight this negative position by liberally distributing french material. It's seems that they have now given up and will become a country just go to for vacation, like Jamaica.

Make sense

[0xABADC0DA]

Google makes unauthorized copies of people's work to store in their servers, in some way similar to how Psystar is found guilty of making unauthorized copies of Mac OS X when it loads it into memory.

Then Google makes money hand over fist from it by selling search results/ads and the people producing the content get nothing or -at best- a very tiny fraction of the income. 'Take from the rich and keep for our own rich selves' sounds a lot like 'do evil' to me.

If your content shows up in Google's results and they make any money off it, then you as the creator of that content should get a portion of that money. Otherwise why do we have copyright laws at all? In a fair world, google and bing should need to set up accounts for each website and pay back a portion of their revenue each time that site's contents appears in a search result with ads in it.

Re:Make sense

[Migraineman]

Wow, you've caught me on an unusually good day. Lemme reach into the big bag o' Troll Feed and let's examine this deeper.

This is bullshit.

Quite possibly, but your emotional reaction tends to indicate that it isn't.

Without the publisher advertising and distributing the book nobody would even know it existed.

A little narrow minded to restrict this to books, but we'll entertain this constraint for now, as it is relevant to the original story. You are correct, without some form of "advertisement," be it word of mouth or billboards along the roadside, nobody would know your book existed. However, the "publisher" in the traditional sense of the word has become irrelevant. There are many avenues at my disposal to advertise a work that don't involve a greedy middleman. Youtube is a great example. Publication and distribution in electronic formats is perfectly viable these days.

If you think its so easy to make it as an author without a publisher, prove it, publish your results, else STFU because you have no fucking clue what you're talking about.

When did I claim it was easy to be an author? I said "Lots of folks actually want their creative works indexed." That does include myself. As for "prove it," I am the author or co-author of a number of technical standards (radio and terrestrial communications) where I received not one thin dime of compensation for doing so, and get this, the standards are publicly available, so I also don't get any compensation when people implement the standards in products.

And just to pre-empt other retards here, no, pointing to a few examples isn't "proof".

How many would be enough? Ten? One hundred? Actually I'm quite amused by the whole "don't show me actual proof, cuz' I just called that it doesn't count." Care to stamp your feet and hold your breath until you turn blue? BTW, I call that the neighbor's tree is "base" where copyright doesn't apply.

Google is using copyright content without permission to make money on online bookstore click-throughs.

They're using an excerpt of the work in question, and the publishers are getting bent out of shape because they're being muscled out of their personal playground.

Somehow I don't think they would be so careless with GPL copyright as it would freak out the simpleton fanbois like you who they desperately need as part of their online forum defense squad.

Fanboi? Forum Defense Squad? Do members of the FDS get to wear nifty uniforms?

Seriously, I don't see anything that reads like "Google can do no wrong." They provide an index, with some advertising that covers the costs. They don't charge me to list my content on their search engine, and my publications are exposed to a broader base of people than I could do otherwise by myself. I benefit from this relationship, directly.

Re:Make sense

[cpt kangarooski]

Democracy doesn't always produce the right answer, and not all laws are worthy of respect, or even legitimate.

Compare speed limits (respected but usually broken), Prohibition (not respected, usually broken), and Civil Rights laws (initially not respected, initially usually broken).

I'd say that usually the government should enact laws that conform with the stated wishes and actual behavior of its people. Sometimes it is good for the government to get in a fight with the people, such as the federal government forcing the South to desegregate, but more usually it is not a good idea, partially because the stakes are so much lower, such as when they banned alcohol.

Overall, I'd say that copyright is more like Prohibition than Civil Rights. While Prohibition was widely considered to be a good idea at the time, it was immediately ignored by pretty much everyone. The lawlessness that this engendered quickly spread, and soon the fact that people ignored the laws about drinking meant that there was a huge upswing in official corruption, in violence, and in organized crime.

If people want to do things which currently would be copyright infringement, I think we would be best off in legalizing this, rather than fighting it. Fighting it hasn't worked so far, and probably never will. But the collateral damage done by the disrespect people have for one law will spread into disrespect for other laws, and the damage done in combating it will be worse than the offenses committed (e.g. three strikes). This issue just isn't important enough for the government to defend; better to yield.

Plus, of course, there's simply no evidence whatsoever that any current copyright law is democratic in nature. For over a century, special interests have dominated the field, and Congress has passed whatever they've been told to pass. More recently, international treaties have been used to completely circumvent domestic political debate, so that ever-worsening laws can be presented as a fait accompli. See e.g. the ACTA treaty, the details of which are being kept secret, which will certainly be non-negotiable once the public and our democratic representatives have a chance to see it, and which will be tied to other important issues so that it is dragged into law not because it is popularly wanted, but because it is inseparable from things we do want (although I'd find that part doubtful too, really).

So don't blather on about democracy; it is absent here, and is likely to malfunction even if we did consult it.

It isn't good to break laws, since this can destabilize society, and it isn't good for society to have bad laws on the books. But which course of action we should take -- breaking it, or suffering from it -- depends on which would be better. Here's another example: The Fugitive Slave Act. I would not have hesitated to break that one; a society that has a law like that is in need of destabilization. We're not at that point with copyright, by any means, but it does remind us that just because something is a law, that doesn't mean we ought to obey it.

I like the idea of copyright, and I think we certainly ought to have copyright laws. But I hate our current copyright laws, and they're getting worse. Depending on who breaks them, and how, I may not have a problem with it, personally.

When we have good laws, we'll talk some more.

Re:Make sense

[Xyrus]

If your content shows up in Google's results and they make any money off it, then you as the creator of that content should get a portion of that money.

You are. You're getting free advertising. If you want even better advertising, you can pay more for it. But only the utterly delusional/idiotic would think that they are getting NOTHING from having Google link to their content.

Otherwise why do we have copyright laws at all?

Originally? Or now?

The original copyright laws were to grant the author a monopoly for a fixed period of time to reward them for their works. Now, copyright laws are used to create a perpetual monopoly and act as cultural sledgehammer.

Look, if you want to be a complete jackass and prevent any search engines for indexing your content, then lock your precious copyrighted materials behind a paywall. Use robots.txt. Make requests to have your content removed. But I'll bet you dollars to dog nuts that you're shooting yourself in the ass by doing so. These days, if it doesn't come up in a search engine IT DOES NOT EXIST.

In a fair world, google and bing should need to set up accounts for each website and pay back a portion of their revenue each time that site's contents appears in a search result with ads in it

In a fair world, you should be on your knees thanking the gods of technology and software that something like Google even exists to link your content to the outside world FOR FREE. You are getting advertisement FOR FREE. Thousands, if not millions of people who would never know you're content existed will know it does FOR FREE. You are getting worldwide exposure FOR FREE.

So choose. Pay for that exposure out of you're own pocket, or have search engines like Google do it FOR FREE.

~X~

Re:Make sense

[cpt kangarooski]

But what the majority wants still isn't reason enough to allow any kind of behaviour.

I agree. It isn't good enough to live in a democracy; not only must the democracy be moderated, so that it doesn't devolve into mob rule, but there must also be protection for minorities, particularly unpopular minorities. Thus the example of the government finally living up to its obligations to protect the civil rights of black people, over the objections of many in the white majority.

Let's face the truth, what the majority wants is very commonly driven by selfish motives

Yes. For example, the majority selfishly wants more creative works to be written and published, and to be as unrestricted as possible, as soon as possible, with regard to what they can do with those works. That is the one and only reason to justify copyright; majority selfishness. Copyright isn't a civil liberty or anything, remember, it is an utterly utilitarian system for helping the public appease their greed for unrestricted works. Indeed, copyright runs directly counter to some of our most important civil liberties, and would be totally intolerable if it not only was state-sponsored censorship (which it is) but was also a bad deal (which it may be, but probably doesn't necessarily have to be).

We do need copyrights of some kind, as everyone should be rewarded when his work is used in any way.

No, we don't need copyrights; the best you can say about them is that we may be better off with copyrights, than without them. Nor should everyone "be rewarded when his work is used in any way." That's not a justification for copyright.

Again, copyrights not a right, they are utilitarian; they should only be granted, when and to the extent that, it benefits the public to do so. If the public is better off granting a copyright to an author, then let's do so. And if the public is better off not granting a copyright to an author, then let's do that. Likewise, the precise duration and amount of protection should be determined by what's best for the public, not what's best for, or desired by the author.

Global fundings of different types have been proposed many times, but were systematically rejected by the right wing, who argued it wouldn't be fair, and we couldn't measure in a realistic and effective way who should get what, and that those who don't use digital media would pay for nothing.

If you mean for everything, generally, I agree with the right wingers on this one (to my surprise). The genius of copyright is that authors who create popular works will get greater rewards than authors who create lousy works; the government doesn't have to directly put in a penny from the public coffers. Copyright isn't a reward, so much as it is a lens or funnel, which directs more of the money that can be made from the work to the copyright holder than he would get otherwise. Although do note that it imposes a transactional cost that can reduce the amount of money being made from a work as well. E.g. 'It's a Wonderful Life' only became popular once it was out of copyright, precisely because it was out of copyright, and thus cheap to air. Even the cost of getting permission, were it granted for free, would've been too much.

I don't mind the government running public museums. I don't mind the government providing some aid to the arts community, if only to keep certain art forms from practically dying out (opera is not a big profit center), or to keep artists employed at something they're good at (e.g. in the 30's, the WPA ran theaters to keep actors working, writing projects to keep authors working, etc.), or hiring artists to beautify public buildings and monuments (Beaux-Arts is nice, but pretty much everything since WW2 is total crap). But beyond this, I don't want the government getting involved in artistic decisions. And providing money without making artistic decisions is even worse, since it lets artists engage in fraud or at least misuse of funds, very easily.

Better to keep the government m

Now if only Sarkozy would be found guilty.

[Hurricane78]

After all he violated his own laws 3 times, and now, according to his own laws, should be thrown off the Internet.

He even did it with intent. As he asked the media industry first, then they denied the request, but then he used it anyway.

Is long as Sarkozy is not behind bars and off the net, this whole thing is a farce.

Re:LMAO this is BS

[ecbpro]

To protect France from what? Nonexisting WMDs? Some OBL in a cave? I see... You know they might not let you fly over their country because they happen to be a sovereign country and it is their right. How often are foreign bombers allowed to fly over US territory?

War of the cultures

[AlexBirch]

France just lost another major battle for the war of the cultures. If Google stays away from all of the copyrighted material in French, that means the world would be more apt to find Victor Hugo in English than in French. I'm grateful that for the most part, the internet is English territory (/. is a great example).

It's just sad to see the French surrender yet another battle.

Re:War of the cultures

[Xtifr]

the world would be more apt to find Victor Hugo in English than in French.

Because...Victor Hugo died more recently in France than he did in the rest of the world? Because copyright laws apply differently depending on the source language? I'm sorry, I have no idea what point you're trying to make here, but I'm pretty sure Victor Hugo's works are in the public domain in every country and language.

Re:Yup

[Grishnakh]

The US does deserve the honor of creating a very good form of government, way back in the late 1700s when Europe was still under the rule of monarchs. Sure, these days every decent country has some sort of Constitutional Republic, but back then it was a downright revolutionary concept. Even better, our form of government has survived ever since the ratification of the Constitution in the 1780s. Most other industrialized nations can't claim to have a form of government that's lasted as long and been so stable; they've all been interrupted by dictatorships (Spain, Germany, Italy), occupations by invaders (Poland, France, Belgium), had a complete change of government (Japan, China), etc. The closest would probably be Great Britain, which instead of some big unheaval like those others, slowly morphed from an absolute monarchy, to a monarchy with a Parliament, to a Parliamentary democracy with a monarch that's nothing but a figurehead.

Unfortunately, while what the USA's founders created was revolutionary and great, 230+ years of time and massive expansion and all kinds of social changes and upheavals have corrupted it greatly, and now it's not working so well and appears to be utterly corrupt at most levels.

Re:Never said it was

[ravenshrike]

We could easily have done what the Russians did to Eastern Europe to Western Europe after WWII if we had wanted to.Or we could have absorbed Japan. Of any government that has held significant power at any time in the history of the world, the US has been the least abusive and most egalitarian.

surrender....

[Savage-Rabbit]

True, as the French surrendered (again) before we became fully engaged there. Prior to their (typical) surrender we helped back them in terms of money and troops. Yet even with the quagmire that sadly enough was Vietnam I don't think it's comparable to the poor choices that Nappy made back in the day...

Yeah, It's not like the USA had to haul ass out of Vietnam with it's tail between it's .... uh... oh wait it did.... If there is one thing we learned from Vietnam (at least the ones of us that haven't been brainwashed with an overdose of extreme right wing ideology) it's that not all problems on this earth can be solved with the lavish over-application of obscene amounts of firepower. Maybe one day you will wake up and realize that the world is not a Rambo movie.... and that line about the French and surrender is getting really old and very tired. You people seem to find it awful easy to forget that it was French money, French guns and French ships that picked your revolution up out of the N-American mud at a time when the British army was wiping the floor with George Washington and his continentals and eventually brought you your independence. At the end thousands of their soldiers and sailors proved instrumental in that process as well. Apparently French troops outnumbered the Americans at at their key victory, the famous siege of Siege of Yorktown.

Re:Never said it was

[Grishnakh]

You're talking ancient history there. The USA conducted itself fairly well back then (though its involvement in the Phillipines wasn't too pretty). Check out the USA's actions after WWII instead; they got worse and worse and worse. Vietnam, overthrowing Latin American governments and installing puppet dictatorships, overthrowing Iran's democratically-elected government and installing the Shah, etc. We're certainly not doing anything noble in Iraq right now.

English, in France

[omb]

I live about 120k from the French border, the Baseler grenze, at which I stop speaking German and shift to French. Thanks to ex President Francois Mitterand almost all young French speak English since they have to pass a spoken English test to go to French University.

In the Alsace, almost all speak German as well, and in the South West Spanish "je n comprend pas" is very much a thing of the past, largely as a consequence of the mobility of labour in the EU.

Re:LMAO this is BS

[koxkoxkox]

That's nice and all to link to Wikipedia, but maybe you should read the articles before ... I will help you :
* there isn't any american air bases in France. It was decided by De Gaulle quite a long time ago : I quote the article linked in your post "On 23 October 1967, all foreign flags were furled and after 17 years all NATO forces departed France."
* France doesn't have any specialized bomber, but now a lot of planes can play the role : for example the Mirage 2000 is a multirole fighter.

Re:It died long ago

[LordAndrewSama]

As a brit, I honestly never expected to, in my life, hear the words "the British have it right" regarding our government. What you say makes sense, but it just doesn't quite compute...