After announcing its cooperative arrangement with Hachette Livre for Google Books operations in France, Google has now said that it is in “notional” talks with UK publishers to come to a similar arrangement, The Bookseller reports. The company also announced Hachette had signed up with its forthcoming e-book program, Google Editions, and hoped to launch it “shortly.”
Industry observers are pleased with the deal, which seems to have produced a similar result to the Google Books settlement without expensive, time-consuming litigation. However, the French Publishers Association is still skeptical, warning that Google "has never respected its commitments as regards intellectual property law".
And French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand has reacted cautiously, expressing regret that Hachette acted unilaterally before the French book business as a whole had reached a consensus strategy, and saying he would continue consulting with the publishing industry toward that end.
Warning that the [agreement between Hachette and Google] must "respect the principles defined within the framework of these consultations", Mitterrand said he had told Google in the last few days that he attaches great importance to the issue and that his priority was for respect of authors’ and publishers’ copyright to be assured before the U.S. concern began working with major institutions like the French National Library. He "will remain attentive to the results of the (legal) procedures underway in the United States", where a settlement between authors and Google is awaiting approval by the courts.
