Google Found Guilty of French Copyright Infringement 254
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the slap-on-the-wrist dept.
from the slap-on-the-wrist dept.
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."
_Some_ US authors and publishers (Score:5, Informative)
It agreed to a settlement with some US authors and publishers. Most authors were not involved.
Re:Yeah, but it's France.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah, but it's France.... (Score:3, Informative)
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:Wanted more info on Editions du Seuil... (Score:1, Informative)
Their website: http://www.editionsduseuil.fr/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ditions_du_Seuil
Re:War of the cultures (Score:4, Informative)
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:Make sense (Score:3, Informative)
Quite possibly, but your emotional reaction tends to indicate that it isn't.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
English, in France (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.