A Chinese novelist’s lawsuit against Google over its online library is going ahead in court after settlement talks failed.
Mian Mian (棉棉) — known for lurid tales of sex, drugs and nightlife — filed suit in October after her latest book, Acid House, was scanned into the library.
Google says it removed the work following Mian Mian’s complaint, but the author is suing for damages of 61,000 yuan (US$9,000) and a public apology.
A Beijing court held a hearing on Wednesday after talks ordered by the judge failed to produce a settlement, Mian Mian’s lawyer Sun Jingwei said.
“Compensation is negotiable, but Mian Mian really is demanding an apology,” Sun said.
A Google spokeswoman in Beijing, Marsha Wang, declined to comment.
The next court date has not been set, Sun said. He said such cases usually can last six months but this one might take more time because of its complexity.
Google’s ambitious effort to make printed works available online has faced opposition from writers in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Google has scanned more than 10 million books, many of them still under copyright.
A government-affiliated group, the China Written Works Copyright Society, is calling on Google to negotiate compensation for Chinese authors.
The group says it has found more than 80,000 works by Chinese authors scanned into the library.
Mian Mian shot to fame in 2000 with her novel Candy, which caused a stir with its graphic depiction of heroin use. Most of her work is banned in China, though pirated copies are widely available.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, is awaiting court approval of a US$125 million settlement with American authors and publishers. US regulators and other companies have objected that its terms might hurt the growth of the electronic book market.
Groups representing photographers and artists filed a new copyright infringement suit against Google in April.
It seeks up to US$150,000 in damages for each of tens of thousands of photos, illustrations and graphic works that it said were copied, stored and electronically displayed without permission.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS