Pour encourager les autres
The aggro for Google from its controversial Google Books project show no sign of abating, as the French, who you can generally count on to throw a spanner in the works if they're not happy, have fined Google €300,000 for digitising some French books without explicitly seeking permission from the publishers.
The case against Google was brought by publisher La Martinière, which wasn't happy about Google scanning and making publically available books it owned. The decision of the Paris court could well be precedent-setting, as plenty of other publishers have reservations about Google Books.
The EU, which isn't exactly shy about taking on US technology giants, has been looking into Google's intentions to scan and make publicly available the world's books for a while, as has the US department of Justice.
Google offered some concessions to the controversial settlement it made with some US authors and publishers a month ago, but the Open Book Alliance - which counts Amazon and Microsoft among its members - was not impressed. In fact, Amazon recently revealed its own strategy for dealing with this sort of thing.
Of course Google regularly finds €300,000 down the back of the sofa, but the thing about legal precedents is that they often open the door to a flood of similar claims. Also, as Intel has recently found, judgements in one region can often herald similar decisions elsewhere.
