Monday Noter Frédéric Filloux warns that the current negotiations between Google and the French government could go very, very wrong:

As for members the press, “They will lose too”, a senior official tells me. First, because of the complications in setting up the machinery the Ancillary Copyright Act would require, they will have to wait about two years before getting any dividends. Two, the governments — the present one as well as the past Sarkozy administration — have always been displeased with what they see as the the French press “addiction to subsidies”; they intend to drastically reduce the €1.5bn in public aid. If the press gets its way through a law, according to several administration officials, the Ministry of Finances will feel relieved of its obligations towards media companies that don’t innovate much despite large influxes of public money. Conversely, if the parties are able to strike a decent business deal on their own, the French Press will quickly get some “compensation” from Google and might still keep most of its taxpayer subsidies.