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Originally Posted by SameOldStory
....THAT article gives hope to both the French and the rest of us. Basically Hachette has given Google the right to scan in and sell many of its out of print books. This is not the same deal as the US/Google deal.
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True, but it's part of the same project.
It's also unclear whether Hachette has the rights to distribute electronic versions, though entirely plausible -- it all depends on the contracts.
And 50k books is a good start, but there are clearly other questions, including whether this is an exclusive deal, or whether any other retailers can distribute digital copies of this material.
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Originally Posted by SameOldStory[/quote
And there is always a forking idiot in the crowd -
"Goggle’s books project is regarded by some French political figures as a US assault on France’s cultural heritage." Opening up "about 50,000 mostly forgotten works of French literature" is going to damage "France’s cultural heritage"?
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When it's done by an American company that showed little respect for existing arrangements? Yeah, I can see it.
I'm quite confident that if a French company was dominating the Internet and made huge strides towards digitizing tons of English books, plenty of Americans (and Brits, I presume) would be up in arms over it.