Let's not waste our energy on fight against Google

The EU Commission wants to consider new copyrights regulations in a move to counteract Google's plans to digitalise books. The left-liberal daily Frankfurter Rundschau comments: "It's a confession of failure that libraries across the world are making their treasures available to Google solely because there is not enough public funding available for them to digitalise them themselves. Certainly people can rail against the exploitation and expropriation of intellectual property, but is it any better to leave 'our' valuable cultural assets rotting away somewhere in analogue format?. We cannot stop the global tide towards the digitalisation of cultural goods. Our culture and language will only be preserved globally in a digitalised - and hence generally accessible - form. Or should everything only be written in English in future? The US is acting in a forward-looking way, and China and India also seem far ahead. So instead of wasting our energy in the fight against Google, Europe and Germany should finally do more for their own cultural assets."

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