French books unavailable on the market to be digitized?

Backed by new legislation adapted to the French Code of intellectual property a first list of 60,000 French 20th-century books has been published on the site ReLIRE on 21 March. Rightsholders are given six months to voice their objection relating to a book.

If there is no objection, the books will be available from 21 September for their republication in digitized form. The agency acknowledged for rights management and authorization is SOFIA, the French society for intellectual property of authors of the written word. Read more at http://relire.bnf.fr/ and http://www.la-sofia.org/.