French “Resistance” Imaginary Heroism

French Publishing Racketeers have employed the courts to prevent Google from digitizing books and documents.

Even if the case doesn't have much financial impact on Google or force a big change in its book-scanning strategy, it is a reminder that its ambitions are increasingly colliding with fears that the company is getting too powerful.

Read: successful.

"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.

The wedge was being able to read a sample of the work, much as you can in the bookstore itself, but ironically, not at the website of FNAC for reasons unknown, the nation’s largest francophone book, music, and gizmo and doodad retailer.

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."

It has absolutely nothing to do with intellectual property rights, especially when the case is brought to court by an organization that has a literal monopoly on anything published in mass, short of small run limited edition publications, and the like. The AUTHOR has no right to bypass this syndicate at all, one known for occasionally practicing political editorialization when all they amount to is a glorified trucking company with a sweaty-palmed union boss. The only reasonable option an author then has, is to try to find a publisher in Quebec.

By contrast, the real effect that the national publishing cartel is having was summed up by Google’s Colombet:

"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 an e-mailed statement. "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 said.

For once the fallacious term “Anglo-Saxon” was not used.