Digital Library On Its Way - But Copyright Holders Need Protection

A court in Paris has found internet search giant Google guilty of infringing French copyright law. La Martiniere, a French publisher, was awarded 300,000 Euros ($ 430,000) in damages and interest. Google was also required to pay a fee of 10,000 Euros ($ 14,000) each day until it removes the book extracts from its database. The French Publishers’ Association, La Martiniere and SGDL – an author’s group – inititiated the hearing and demanded that Google be fined 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 Google has found itself in court as a result of their ambitious plan to become the world’s digital librarian. A class action was filed against Google Books by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a number of individual authors and publishers in 2001. Google had, they alleged, breached copyright laws by scanning books from university libraries without getting permission from the copyright owners in some cases.

At the time, Google claimed that it was operating under the “fair use” principle as only short snippets of books scanned without the permission of copyright holders were made available.

In October of 2008 an agreement was reached with Google establishing a $ 125 million fund to compensate authors whose books were made available online. However, the deal applied in North America only and there were problems with books which, even though they were out of copyright in the USA, were still under copyright law in other countries. In addition to opposition from Europe, including both the French and German governments, Google also faces competition from Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo who support the “Open Book Alliance” being driven by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a non-profit organisation which scans and digitises books. To date, they have scanned over half a million books, all of which are available free. The founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, has expressed his concerns that Google is attempting to monopolise the library system.

Google’s viewpoint, which many will agree with, is that their scanning program will make millions of books, which are currently out of print and which would otherwise be inaccessible to most readers, available. Users of the Amazon Kindle can also access free Kindle 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 probable that our reading habits are about to undergo major change and the method of both book storage and delivery will be updated to take advantage of the internet and electronic formatting. However, before that can happen it may be necessary to ensure that the legal framework is in place and that author’s and other copyright holders are not disadvantaged.

Four Good Reasons To Use Viral E-Books

Four Good Reasons to Use Viral E-books

More and more people are realizing the great resources that are now available for launching and growing viral marketing campaigns, by using E-books, specifically ’FREE E-books’. There are four reasons that we should look at today, on why this is true and how it will be for many years to come.

1. E-books are cheap to produce and don’t take long to set up. Whatever subject you are promoting, you will need to have several articles, perhaps you have a few that you have already written and all of them will need to be added to your E-book. If, on the other hand, writing isn’t your forte, you can use rebrandable E-books that have been produced by others. You can find several of these resources by using your favorite internet search engine and typing in the words: “rebrandable E-books”. There will be a lot of hits that will come up, so you should not have any problem finding what your looking for. One way to distribute these E-books to visitors on your website is to give them as a free gift for subscribing to your newsletter. If your E-book contains material that people will want to share with their friends and family, they will pass it along to them and they will continue passing it along to their friends and so forth, all of which will help you to make money.

2. E-books are a great way to reach a very large number of people. It is very important that you encourage enthusiasm over your E-book. That is why it is critical that your E-books have things in them that are current and interesting, then people will want to share them with others. Remember that people like to learn new things that the rest of the world needs to know. So by having your E-book up-to-date will give them the sort of edge they need when sharing the information to others.

3. E-books are a way to sell products other than the one you originally targeted. For example: if you are selling garden products, your customers could also be interested in E-books about lawns, trees landscaping, etc.

4. E-books are effective in building your reputation. It is a high compliment when users feel you have a good quality E-book and they begin to pass it on to their family and friends.

It was William Foster who once said, “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives”.