Are Free Ebooks The Way Ahead?

Internet search giant Google has been found guilty of copyright infringement by a court in Paris. French publisher, La Martiniere, was awarded 300,000 Euros ($ 430,000) in damages and interest. Google was also ordered to pay the sum of 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until it withdraws the book extracts from its database. The court hearing was initiated by the French Publishers' Association, La Martiniere and SGDL - an author's group - who demanded that Google be forced to pay 15m Euros ($ 21m).

The size of the final settlement is trivial for Google - but there may yet be implications for Google's plans to scan and make available online as many of the world's books as possible. Google is currently in the process of scanning and digitising pretty much any book it can get its hands on. Out of copyright books are made available in their entirety. Books which remain in copyright either have snippets of them made available online or have the whole book made available under a licensing scheme.

It's not the first time that Google has had to go to court regarding their plan to make books available in a digital library. The Author's Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a number of independent publishers and individual authors filed a class action against Google in 2001. They alleged that Google had breached copyright law by digitising books from university libraries without, in some cases at least, seeking the consent of the copyright holders.

Google claimed that it was complying with the principle of "fair use" as books which were scanned without the copyright holder's permission had only short snippets made available.

In October of 2008 a deal was struck with Google establishing a $ 125 million fund to compensate authors whose works were made available online. However, the deal was applicable in North America only and raised problems with books which, whilst perhaps out of copyright in the USA, were still under copyright law in other parts of the world.

As well as opposition from Europe, including both the German and French governments, Google faces competition from Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon - who all support the "Open Book Alliance" run by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation which is also in the business of scanning and digitising books. Over half a million books have been scanned and stored by the Internet Archive to date, all of which are available free online. The founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, is concerned that Google is attempting to monopolise the library system.

Google has argued that their system will make millions of out of print books, which would otherwise be inaccessible to most readers, available. Users of the Amazon Kindle can also access out of copyright ebooks via Amazon's Kindle store and there are a number of other projects which make certain books available at no charge online. It does seem likely that our reading habits will change and the method of both book storage and delivery will be updated for the digital age. However, before that can happen it may be necessary to ensure that the legal framework is in place and that authors and other copyright holders are not disadvantaged.

Source free Kindle ebooks direct from Amazon and make your Amazon Kindle reader pay for itself in no time.