Google et Les Françaises — Hardly a French Kiss

Google et Les Françaises . . . So let’s see, the Can-Can began-gan in Paris. But now, Google has come to find that Can’t-Can’t has originated there as well.

A Paris court has ordered Google to cease its scanning and subsequent distributing of French books online. The court awarded the plaintiffs roughly $400,000 (US) in damages, and ordered Google to pay about $14K per day that the material remains on the web.  The plaintiffs had sought about $26 million in damages.

You will recall that Google has made a global push to digitize books – becoming, in a sense, the Digital Alexandria – and has received quite a bit of flack/resistance and legal bills for its efforts.  In the U.S., Google reached a proposed settlement with class plaintiffs over a similar issue, and the Court just recently approved of that proposal.  Notably, it excludes foreign works published after January 5, 2009, provided such works had been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office by that date, or had been published in Canada, the United Kingdom or Australia by then.