French court orders Google to stop Books project

The LA Times reports that Google has lost its first major court case involving its controversial book digitization project.

A Paris court ruled this week that Google's project violated French copyright law and that Google must pay a large fine and take down French works cited in the case. This ruling comes hot on the heels of a large settlement between Google and a number of US publishers and authors.

Right before the the court ruling, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged 750,000 Euros to support an all-French book digitization project.

The French objection to Google seems to have as much to do with wanting to preserve French culture as it does with disapproval of Google's interpretation of copyright law.