Google’s plans to provide digital versions of classic books over the internet have run into trouble in France after President Sarkozy vowed to spend hundreds of millions of euros to see off what he regards as a threat to the country’s cultural heritage. Mr Sarkozy has signalled that he will earmark a substantial portion of a new state investment fund to try to head off Google’s drive to digitise French-language and European books and art. “We are not going to be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is,” Mr Sarkozy said.
Mr Sarkozy’s money will go to boosting Gallica, France’s own book-scanning project, which is tied into Europeana, the EU’s ambitious digital library. The underfunded institution, also inspired by France and backed by Germany, has gathered pace over the past year. Defenders of Gallic independence warned of disaster if France allowed Google to digitise its culture. Jean-Noël Jeanneney, a former chief of the national library (BNF), said that Europe’s very history was under threat. The French could be fed only an Anglo-Saxon version of its revolution in which “valiant British aristocrats triumphed over bloodthirsty Jacobins and the guillotine blotted out the rights of man”, he wrote recently
No comments:
Post a Comment