back to article Google annexes Bibliothèque Nationale de France

France's cultural imperial guard has waved the white flag at Google and handed over the keys to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The French nation's citadel of learning will allow itself to be occupied by Google's battalions of book-scanning vulgarians, in what some see as a victory for Anglo Saxon cultural attitudes, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gallic attitude

    Of course, should the French change their mind along the way, they'll do it without any regard to what Google considers (Anglo-Saxon) fair play, contracts etc.*

    as they say "Boff!"

    *that said, we the British still retain some affection for the French, otherwise we wouldn't go there for holidays, join them in opposing the Hun, put up with being kpet out of the Common Market.

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  3. Chris C

    Why not?

    "'If Google can enable us to go faster and farther, then why not?' he reportedly said."

    Why not? Maybe because of something called copyright. YOU, the librarian, do not get the right to say what can and cannot be done with the AUTHORs' works. And yet, that is exactly what is happening. Google is copying books in their entirety without the authors' permission. How is that NOT copyright infringement? For those claiming "but they won't show the whole book, and they're doing this to get people to buy the book!", ask yourself why Google is doing this. There is only one answer -- money. It's a safe bet that they'll get a commission on any book sold, thus financially profiting from their copyright infringement. But hey, it's Google, so it must be okay.

    As an individual, I am not allowed to walk into the library and make a photocopy of an entire book. So why is acceptable for Google to do so?

    I have no problem with Google scanning books for which the copyright holders have given them permission to do so. I do, however, have a problem with Google copyright someone else's work without permission. Sadly, it appears I'm one of the dwindling few who actually believe in copyright anymore*.

    * For those freetards of you, you ARE aware that copyright is the only thing protecting your precious Linux kernel (and other GPL-ed projects), right? Without copyright, any company could use any GPL-ed work without sharing it (or even acknowledging it).

  4. disgruntled yank

    spelling

    Should "Bodelian" perhaps be "Bodiddleyan", or is it only the French who cotton to American pop culture?

  5. Jesse Dorland

    French are French

    I wouldn't trust French's government for anything...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what about the books from the 1700's

    I would give somebody's left arm to be able to peruse the pages of most of the books from the 1800's and prior with their caligraphy and illustrations.

    If Google can make the books available that everyday people would otherwise never experience, then I'm all for it. Besides, they understand that they cannot sell, without payment, books that are under copyright. If the books are 'orphaned (what a stupid term)' then the author's percentage goes into a escrow account. If said author who refused to be identified during Google's preliminary work decides to come forward, well, they'll get paid.

    Why would an author not want to have their books read? The only example I can find is that 'disappearing text' book written by Stephen King back in the '90's. It was a single use book. Oh, the other example is school textbooks. They are now out-of-date by the middle of the term.

    stine

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who was it

    who coined the phrase "cheese eating, surrender monkeys"

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Muhahahaha

    Hmm, the usual "white flag" rhetoric between others hateful slurs from some of the commonly retarded British folks. Jeez how they are pathetic. Their insular mentality, outright jealousy and their "press" daily nauseous bigotry against "the french" have given us this appalling kind of ludicrous fucktards.

  9. Dave C

    Something not quite right about this story...

    The Bibliothèque Nationale de France haven't agreed a deal whereby Google digitizes texts. They already have their own digitzing scheme with over 750,000 texts already online and freely available at gallica.bnf.fr. (An effort which puts our publicly funded libraries to shame, particularly since Microsoft pulled the plug on its deal with the British Library and others and took the texts that had been digitized under that deal offline).

    Presumably this is some kind of partnership allowing google to include the stuff already online at gallica in its google book search. Which is not the same thing at all.

  10. lukewarmdog

    que?

    Commonly retarded British folks?

    I must be one of them as I have no idea what you're babbling on about.

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