Google has had many troubles in the French territory and the problems were severe enough to get Google terms such as ‘cultural imperialist’ by the French politicians. Publishers there have even called Google a ‘copyright cheat’. But still surprisingly, France is the sole country where Google manages to strike a longstanding business goal.
The digitalization of thousands of paper books which have been written in French would be available. This was known when there was an agreement signed between Google and Hachette Livre, a publisher. This is a digitalization deal which would be really on a large scale. These parties had earlier in 2010 even entered in a preliminary deal, but the agreement between U.S. publishers and authors and Google was a broader agreement which literally overshadowed the former deal. The U.S. agreement was even like the Hachette deal, wherein these ink printed books were agreed to be digitalized, but there are still copyright issues surrounding the deal. This issue is open for a majority of the books from all over the world.
U.S. deal as for now is still shelved which was its last status update since last winter when Denny Chin, a U.S. judge marked the rejection of the American settlement. But on the other hand, Google’s French connection looks better which is already in its final stages. Google plans to come up with Google Editions’ French version by the end of the year and that would even mark the start of selling of these e-book versions as Google intended.
Talking about the search engine giant’s problems in France, the Hachette deal is a part of Lagardere, the media conglomerate which has not been of great help for Google regarding its problems with the publishers of France. Gallimard, Flammarion and Albin Michel are among those French publishers who have their lawsuits registered against Google. The claim says that the scanning of their books were done illegally. La Martiniere, yet another publisher has already a victory case against the search engine giant for a similar issue.
This has not rifted the upcoming partnership between Hachette and Google. France’s biggest publisher, Hachette has a market share of almost one-fourth in the French territory. The duo are of the thought that this deal could be in fact a model for a rapprochement in the broader sense. Google’s London-based copyright policy and communications manager, Simon Morrison said that they would like to get into similar agreements with publishers based in France and its actually what they are talking about with their partners.
Hachette stated that this digitalization would contribute to the French culture’s advancement as these copies would be available at various libraries including the major Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
There is no update of late on the U.S. deal for Google, but the two deals have a lot of differences too. The major problem in the U.S. deal is that Google is free to get the printed books digitalized, unless and until the original copyright holders object and opts out from the settlement. Unlike in the Hachette deal, where Hachette controls the selection of books which can be digitalized and sold by the search engine giant.
Whatever may be the case, the latter has raced ahead of the U.S. deal and even though its in the infancy stage, it would stay ahead of the U.S. deal, by a small but a significant margin.