The legal wrangling over Google Books — the tech giant’s wildly ambitious project to become one of the largest libraries and booksellers in the world — has taken on an international flavor. In late September a French publisher accused the ubiquitous search engine of breaking French copyright law in its effort to scan millions of books.
Since 2005 Google Inc. has been inching its way toward — but not quite reaching — a settlement with authors and publishers that would give Google Book Search the right to scan and display millions of copyrighted books. Google has been scrambling to make changes to reach a settlement with parties that include the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, and a bevy of copyright holders.
