• Reuters , Tuesday, September 8, 2009 3:30 PM

More than any humanitarian cause or security threat, Google's attempts to catalog the world's liberties are aligning the interests' of sovereign nations. Following Germany's warning to U.S. lawmakers that Google Books could have international implications on copyright law, privacy, and the rights of authors, France has written to a U.S. court urging it to stop a $125 million settlement between Google and US book publishers. The perceived danger is that Google will have unfair control over European works and a "monopoly (on) digitising European orphan works without permission." In the spirit of damage control, Google is promising to consult European publishers before publishing their works in the U.S., and to appoint two Europeans to a new copyright-distributing registry.

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