File this one under “humble pie.” According to a report in the New York Times, France’s culture minister, Frederic Mitterand, is getting ready to make a trip to Google’s headquarters to talk about how Google (NSDQ: GOOG) could help it with its project to digitise books.
Wait. Is this the same French government that has slammed Google over its books programme, and last week suggested a tax on online advertising — a ‘Google tax’ — to help subsidize creative industries impacted by the digital revolution, as well as a proposed antitrust investigation of the company.
It turns out that in the same Zelnik report that proposed the tax on online advertising, there is another suggestion: partnering with other companies to help digitize books from France’s national library and other public institutions. The project would use taxpayer money to carry out the job.
France already has a project to digitize books. It’s call Gallica, and is aimed at archiving books that are no longer under copyright. But to date it only has 145,000 books in its database, while Google has in total scanned more than 10 million books.
Google, which already has agreements with some French organisations, including a municipal library in Lyon, seems like a natural partner for this. But Mitterrand, according to the report, will be looking for Google to concede on a number of points if the two are to work together: He wants Google to stop striking exclusive arrangements with organisations that agree to participate in its book program.
And he also wants “greater respect for French copyright traditions.” The two have been in court over Google’s proposal to scan books that are under copyright. In December French publishers succeeded in getting a court ruling to block Google from doing this. The Internet giant is appealing that decision.

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