walkman - 1:26 am on Dec 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

Different country, different laws. There's an anti-American culture sentiment here and there but laws do vary. See libel laws in UK for example. Or the fact that AFAIK you can't even publish a convicted killer's name in Germany after a while due to privacy laws.

By American law, Google's copy/index/show+snippets IS fair use, and therefore IS legal -- multiple judges have ruled that way. I'm not sure whether the Europeans are ruling differently because of chauvinism (anything American is evil) or fascism (any thought you don't have a permit for is forbidden). In some cases (the French president, simultaneously promoting a three-strikes law for tiny-scale noncommercial copyright violations and being sued for three major large-scale for-profit copyright violations on his own account), both motives seem pretty strongly evinced.