Google defends digital library
Updated on 07 September 2009
The search engine giant defends publishing millions of books online as it tries to convince the European Commission to strike a digital book deal.
Google has defended its scanning and publishing of millions of books online by saying it is making finding information on the web more democratic.
The search engine company has struck a deal with author and publisher groups in the US, allowing it to copy books for the internet.
And now, in trying to convince the European Commission, Goiogle has incurred the wrath of France and Germany, who are worried about authors' copyright.
The European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding told Jon Snow she thought that Google was an asset but only as long at it played by the rules.
"The rules in Europe are of course to respect copyright - copyright is the remuneration for our authors and we need this to happen the European way.
"What we are going to do in the next coming weeks is to sit together with all the stakeholders - it could be Google or it could be other private instruments: the national libraries, the editors, the national book shops, what ever we have - we sit together, we find solutions so that in Europe we have one set of rules so that a) the books to be available to all our consumers and b) the authors to profit of the copyright."
