Google bumbs into French copyright laws and gets fined

Mon 21 December 2009 09:00, Bas van den Beld

A Paris court has ruled that Google has broken France copyright laws when it displays snippets of books in search results. The court fined Google no less than 300.000 euros to be paid to French publisher La Martiniere.

The case was brought to court by publisher La Martiniere on behalf of several French publishers.

As expected Google wasn't very happy with the ruling. They said:

"French readers now face the threat of losing access to a significant body of knowledge and falling behind the rest of internet users"

Google already said they will go and appeal the decision made by the court.

Serge Eyrolles, chairman of the French publishers association was on the other side happy with the verdict:

"It shows Google that they are not King of the world and can do whatever they want."

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