Sarkozy throws France into a war on Google
So much for the information revolution
Sarkozy is to take on Google’s project to digitise French language and European books and art, by funding a French digitisation project. From The Times:
“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. “We are not going to be deprived of what generations and generations have produced in the French language just because we weren’t capable of funding our own digitisation project.”
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.
Google has been scanning out-of-copyright books sitting in US libraries for years. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is freely available on Google Books. Search it. Download the entire copy. Everyone seems to be happy. Except Nicolas Sarkozy. He blew a fuse upon finding out that the French National Library was “collaborating” – which in France means colluding – with Google to scan part of its collection.
The BNF clarified its position last August. It is extraordinary enough that the press release was published in English. But try to imagine this last statement coming out of anywhere except France:
The Bibliothèque nationale de France does not intend to enter into any argument especially when controversies tend to become personal.
Sadly, Mr Sarkozy has made the issue personal. If not out of sheer vainglory, then for political ends. It is not the first time that we have seen this kind of posturing from the president. The plan proposed by his culture minister Frederic Mitterrand to lock the library’s collection into an EU-funded archive costing £700mn must be understood in this context. Gallica, as the archive is unsurprisingly called, will “achieve a European consensus against Google”.
“We have to regulate the market. The state has to do it and not some private concern,” said Frederic Mitterrand.
The people working at Google Books must find this weird back-of-beyond mentality either really amusing or extremely frustrating. The very idea of a country fighting a corporation that will, in the end, promote its culture is absurd. And since when does the market for freely available information have to be regulated?
Interesting blog post, Matthew. I didn’t know Sarkozy was capable of neo-gaullist tantrum like that. It almost makes me want to defend him haha.
Or at least, I tend to support the not-so-absurd idea that national cultures should be provided and fostered by states (or political entities like the UE) as a public service and not by the private sector. You know, just cuz eventually, Google won’t be scanning those free-of-copyright books for free. It’s a for-profit corporation after all.
So I end up on Sarko’s side, even though his gov’t and him are probably doing it for the wrong reason (political ends) you are rightly pointing out.
Indeed, if you then transpose the debate of private vs. public sector, to France, you can only expect such controversies. France, where the language and the culture are irremovable part of its national identity, one of Sarko’s hobbyhorse right now, a little context cannot hurt, right?
It is simply better PR to defend keeping classics of the french literature within the grasp of France than to accuse migrants, both documented and undocumented, to destroy the French identity – a ongoing claim made by the ruling UMP party and the French goverment over the last month or so, as part of their current ‘national debate on the French identity’.
Then you understand more easily why Sarko & co are so adamant on catering a public service of digitalization of the said culture.
And, by the way, it’s a quite impressive litany of clichés about France you got here, too. Only a few baguettes and bérets are lacking here and there, ineuh maïe eaupinioneuh.
Thomas
December 14, 2009 at 12:34 pm