11 December 2009 | Author: Katie Todd

French president Sarkozy says no to Google book scanning

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has lashed out at US search agency Google over its plans to digitise the world's classic literature, announcing that the French component of this collection is not to be included amongst other famous titles for the profit of an American company.

According to the Irish Times, Sarkozy spoke at a public meeting in Alsace and told delegates that France would increase financial support for its own book digitisation project rather than let the Mountain View agency go ahead with its mission to scan out-of-copyright literature in order to present it online in a searchable form.

He said: "We won't let ourselves be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," delivering a striking blow to the US corporation.

"We are not going to be stripped of what generations and generations have produced in the French language," he added, "just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitisation project."

Although the out-of-copyright status of the books means that they are up for grabs by anyone, it seems that Sarkozy is determined to get them online through French resources first rather than relinquish online ownership to Google, a company France has locked horns with on previous occasions.

In 2005, France teamed up with Germany to announce that they would work on a new multimedia search engine called Quaero - "I search" in Latin - that was considered by many to be a hostile opposition to the world-famous Google.

Currently, Google is already under fire for scanning French literature still protected by copyright, with the company being accused of illegally copying and publishing works it did not have the rights to. And, as France is one of the countries that takes online piracy most seriously, with repeat illegal downloaders being disconnected from the net as punishment, it's probably a bad idea for Mountain View to get on the wrong side of their piracy laws.

However this turns out, as long as some of France's great works of literature end up available online, many people will be happy - but who will get to the finish line first?

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