France, GooglePrint, and Copyright Law
The article "Quand Google défie l'Europe" (When Google challenges Europe) by Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in the 23 January Le Monde has been getting a lot of play recently in the Western press. (Just do a search for Jeanneney in your favorite news search engine.) Jeanneney complains that the Google's plans to digitize books from five libraries will necessarily reflect an Anglo-American view of the world, to the detriment of European culture and viewpoints.
Jeanneney doesn't mention it, but I find it ironic that a copyright law that was supposed to protect European works may actually end up contributing to the problem and diminishing European cultural influence. We know that as many as 90% of the books published in the US between 1923 and 1963 are in the public domain, and in theory could be made freely available by Google. But thanks to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, all books published in France during this period are protected by copyright in the US, and Google wouldn't be able to make them freely available even if they wanted to. Any national bias in the Google database is more likely to result from international treaties than from Western commercial interests.
This is just one more example of how our copyright laws may no longer be serving the public interest -and why we can hope that the Golan v. Ashcroft suit overturns this offensive law.
What a great take on his comments. Thank you!
Posted by: Eli | February 23, 2005 at 06:53 PM