PARIS – A Paris court ruled Friday that Google Inc.'s expansion into digital books breaks France's copyright laws, and a judge slapped the Internet search leader with a euro10,000-a-day fine until it stops showing literary snippets.
Besides being fined the equivalent of $14,300 for each day in violation, Google was ordered to pay euro300,000 ($430,000) in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere, which brought the case on behalf of a group of French publishers.
Google attorney Alexandra Neri said the company would appeal.
The decision erects another legal barrier that may prevent Google from realizing its 5-year-old goal of scanning all the world's books into a digital library accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
A U.S. legal settlement that would give Google the digital rights to millions of books is in limbo because U.S. regulators have warned a federal judge in New York that the arrangement probably would thwart competition in the budding electronic book market and compromise copyrights, as well.
The top U.S. copyright official and the governments in Germany and France also have raised objections about that settlement overstepping its bounds. Google is trying to address the critics with a revised settlement that is still under court review.
The French case is relatively small in comparison. It didn't even seem to faze investors as Google shares gained $3.86 to $597.80 in Friday afternoon trading.
Still, the ruling served as a reminder that Google's ambitious push into other markets beyond Internet search increasingly is clashing with fears the Mountain View, Calif., company is getting too powerful.
As part of the backlash, Google has been depicted as a copyright scofflaw that prospers off the content of others — a portrayal the company's management insists is totally off base.
The head of the French publisher's union applauded Friday's verdict.
"It shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can't do whatever they want," said Serge Eyrolles, president of France's Syndicat National de l'Edition. He said Google had scanned 100,000 French books into its database, 80 percent of which were under copyright.
Eyrolles said French publishers would still like to work with Google to digitize their books, "but only if they stop playing around with us and start respecting intellectual property rights."
Philippe Colombet, the head of Google's book-scanning project in France, said the company disagrees with the court's ruling.
"French readers now face the threat of losing access to a significant body of knowledge and falling behind the rest of Internet users," Colombet said in a conference call with reporters. "We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books."
Colombet declined to answer questions about whether Google would remove the books from its database or pay the fine. "We are going to study the judgment carefully over the coming days," he said.
The judgment will have little or no effect on Internet users outside of France. And French books that are in Google's database with publishers' consent will remain searchable, even in France. Colombet could not say how many French books Google has scanned overall, or how many French publishers allowing Google to show its works.
Google has scanned more than 10 million books worldwide since 2004, including 2 million with the consent of about 30,000 publishers, About 9,000 of those publishers are in Europe, Colombet said. Another 2 million books in Google's library no longer are in copyright. Google has been only showing snippets from the remaining books while it tries to iron out copyright disputes.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made catching up on France's digital delay one of the national priorities by earmarking euro750 million (about $1 billion) of a euro35 billion spending plan announced earlier this week for digitizing France's libraries, film and music archives and other repositories of the nation's recorded heritage.

Earlier this week a consortium of French technology companies announced a plan to create a book scanning project they said would be better than Google's, but only in three years time.

___

Associated Press Writer Nicolas Vaux-Montagny in Paris and AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate is poised tomorrow
to take an early morning vote that will lead toward passage of
the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health-care system in
more than four decades.

The vote to cut off debate is scheduled for 1 a.m., Monday,
in a U.S. Capitol blanketed by a snowstorm and filled with weary
senators and staff. Democrats, finally united in favor of the
bill, are using the clock to overcome delaying tactics by
Republicans universally opposed to the effort.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to win final
passage by Dec. 24 now that he secured the vote of his party’s
last holdout, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. The 10-year, $871
billion bill is designed to cover 31 million uninsured
Americans, curb costs and place new restrictions on insurers.

“The American people will have the vote they deserve on
genuine reform,” President Barack Obama, who has made the issue
his top legislative priority, told reporters yesterday. “We are
on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality.”

Nelson had held out the possibility Reid wouldn’t meet his
deadline of Christmas passage as he objected to parts of the
bill, giving critics hope for more time to marshal opposition.
He finally struck a deal that satisfied his demand to keep U.S.
subsidies from being used for abortion and won an agreement for
more aid to help Nebraska provide coverage for the uninsured.

‘Powerful Moment’

The agreement came late on Dec. 18 over a handshake.

“It was a pretty powerful moment,” said Reid, a Nevada
Democrat. “That’s what this place is built on, handshakes.”

Reid needed Nelson’s support because passage will require
all 60 votes controlled by Democrats to cut off stalling tactics
from Republicans, who say the measure would raise taxes, hurt
insurers and widen the federal budget deficit.

The Republican leaders in both the House and Senate, Ohio
Representative John Boehner and Kentucky Senator Mitch
McConnell, called the bill a “monstrosity.”

Reid’s plan would cover 94 percent of eligible Americans
under 65, and reduce the deficit by $132 billion over its first
decade, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.

Like the $1 trillion measure passed Nov. 7 by the House,
the Senate plan would require Americans to get health coverage
or pay a penalty. It would expand the Medicaid health program
for the poor, set up online insurance-purchasing exchanges and
provide subsidies for those who need help buying policies. If it
passes the Senate, the bill would then have to be reconciled
with the version passed by the House and signed by Obama.

Nelson warned that his vote isn’t guaranteed if the bill is
revised much in negotiations with the House. If there are big
changes, “I will vote against it,” he told reporters.

Winners and Losers

Health insurers and companies such as medical-device maker
Medtronic Inc. of Minneapolis and drugmaker Pfizer Inc. of New
York would get millions of new customers with the extension of
coverage. Their industries would also face billions of dollars
in new fees.

Insurers such as Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth
Group Inc. would be required to accept all new clients,
regardless of pre-existing conditions and face limits on how
much revenue can be spent beyond covering medical expenses.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s Washington
trade group, said the bill would “increase costs for families
and small businesses and disrupt the quality coverage on which
millions of Americans rely today.”

No Public Option

A 383-page amendment Reid offered yesterday made some major
and minor changes to the proposed legislation.

Gone was a new government-run insurance program, or public
option, designed to compete with private insurers. As an
alternative, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which
oversees benefits for all civilian federal workers and members
of Congress, would contract with private insurers to offer
multistate plans on the insurance exchange.

Reid dropped plans for a tax on cosmetic surgery, dubbed
the “Bo-tax,” in favor of a 10 percent levy on indoor tanning
salons. And he raised a Medicare payroll tax hike to 0.9
percent, from 0.5 percent earlier, on individuals earning more
than $200,000 or families making more than $250,000.

Reid also boosted penalties for companies that don’t
provide health insurance. Any company with more than 50
employees could face a penalty of $750 per worker, multiplied by
the total number of full-time workers it employs, if just one
obtains subsidized coverage through an exchange. That’s up from
a penalty of $400 in an earlier draft.

Abortion Fight

On abortion, the legislation would set up an accounting
procedure to prevent government funds from being used to fund
abortions covered by private insurance on the exchanges. States
would be able to keep their own prohibitions on abortion
coverage, and the exchanges would have to offer at least one
plan that doesn’t cover the procedure.

Nelson said the language satisfied him, though it drew
criticism from antiabortion groups. The Nebraska lawmaker also
won another prize, with additional Medicaid costs to his state
being absorbed by the federal government.

“A number of states are treated differently than other
states,” Reid told reporters. “That’s what legislation is all
about. Compromise.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Laura Litvan in Washington at
llitvan@bloomberg.net
Kristin Jensen in Washington at
kjensen@bloomberg.net

Operation Chokehold, the coordinated attack on AT&T's wireless network, was both a success and failure on Friday. The success was in further highlighting the complaints of iPhone users against the carrier; the failure was that it didn't appear to have much effect on the AT&T network.

"We saw no impact," AT&T told ABCNews.com.

To many, the failure to disrupt the network was a success, too. At least it was for those of us who--along with the FCC--consider a malicious attack on essential infrastructure to be irresponsible. (If you need to read about how the event got started, here's our story).

The failure of the attack was also good news for businesses that rely on AT&T's data network, but may have provided valuable emergency planning experience for some.

Expressing anger toward a wireless carrier is one thing, but potentially disrupting people's livelihoods is something else entirely. And no, there is nothing funny about that, even if it was started as a joke.

The ABC News story does, however, quote some of those involved in the protest as saying they believe it managed to slow data traffic for a time. Others, however, reported no slowdown.

Regardless, the protesters made their point and again cast AT&T in a bad light. Whether AT&T is actually so bad is subject to conjecture. Some believe the iPhone itself is part of the problem, due to its software and hardware design.

Others place the blame for slow data throughput and dropped voice calls squarely upon AT&T, which says it is aggressively improving its network to improve speed and reliability.

My take: Some of my fellow iPhone users really need to grow up. And Dan Lyons, whose "Fake Steve Jobs" blog started this mess, could, perhaps, be a tad more responsible in how he incites his readers to future acts of malicious behavior.

Fortunately, Operation Chokehold generated more bluster than service disruption. And if it caused business to consider how to deal with a real wireless disruption, as might occur during some emergency, then the protest might have had actual value as a training exercise.

David Coursey has been writing about technology products and companies for more than 25 years. He tweets as

@techinciter

and may be

contacted

via his Web site.

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
If the men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks wonder what conditions they might face when they are moved to New York from Guantanamo Bay for trial, they can expect solitary confinement, 23-hour-a-day lockdowns, constant video surveillance and almost no visitors.

That has been the experience in New York of one American student, Syed Fahad Hashmi, accused of minor acts of aiding al Qaeda. Those conditions have drawn criticism from human rights advocates who protest outside the Manhattan jail where Hashmi has spent 2-1/2 years in solitary confinement awaiting trial.

Outside the jail housing Hashmi, just a hew hundred yards (meters) from the site of the 9/11 attacks known as Ground Zero, protesters carry banners reading "No Guantanamos at Home or Abroad" and say the case shows a lack of rights for terrorism defendants.

Such confinement for some suspects charged under anti-terrorism laws are called special administrative measures, or SAMs. The U.S. Justice Department says SAMs -- which need approval of the U.S. Attorney General -- are needed to prevent violence and that Hashmi was threatening British authorities when he was arrested.

The U.S. Justice Department is considering moving dozens of cases from Guantanamo Bay military prison to the United States for trials in civilian courts. They may also face SAMs, designed to block communications from dangerous inmates.

NBC reported on Tuesday that a grand jury in New York is hearing evidence against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11 attacks in 2001, and four accused accomplices. A grand jury decides whether the evidence presented is strong enough to bring charges.

"I would not be surprised if there are SAMs isolating these guys as they are much higher profile cases than the Hashmi case," said Karen Greenberg, executive director for the Center on Law and Security. "There are real (due process) concerns about the Hashmi case."

SOCKS, PONCHOS, RAINCOATS

The past 2-1/2 years in solitary confinement for Hashmi, a Pakistani-born American student, is one of the longest periods in America that a suspect has ever been held in isolation before trial. Hashmi is accused of storing waterproof socks, ponchos and raincoats for two weeks in his London flat.

At trial, set to start in January, the main witness, Junaid Babar, is expected to say Hashmi held the military clothing for him, knowing they would be passed to al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors say Hashmi also gave his phone to Babar to call a convicted bombing conspirator and lent Babar money for a plane ticket to Pakistan to transport the gear. Babar has testified at terrorism trials in Britain and Canada since pleading guilty in 2004 to supporting al Qaeda.

"We are seeing Muslims accused of terrorism who are experiencing a much harsher brand of due process," said Hashmi's lawyer, Sean Maher. "These measures ... lead to a situation of complete sensory deprivation."

Hashmi is the first terrorism suspect extradited to the United States from Britain, making his a test case for U.S.-British cooperation. He has pleaded not guilty and faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted.

The SAMs include a 23-hour-a-day lockdown, constant video surveillance of his cell and a limit of two visits per month from one family member. Hashmi's lawyer says that means his client is not in a state to defend himself properly.

Hashmi is one of only five defendants held under SAMs before trial; four of the five are terrorism suspects. Usually such prisoners face the special measures after conviction.

Of more than 200,000 federal inmates, 42 are held under SAMs and of those, 28 are imprisoned on terrorism-related convictions, the Justice Department said.

(Editing by Mark Egan and Sandra Maler)