et was decided a free trade area,
i.e. without any custom taxes for software, films and electronic books
bought online. Material goods (books, CDs, DVDs, and so on) and
services were subject to existing regulations, with collection of the
VAT for example, but with no additional custom taxes.

Amazon.com and others had great assets, but there were bad news for
small bookstores. Like the small bookstore set up in 1971 by my friend
Catherine Domain in central Paris, on the island Ile Saint-Louis,
surrounded by the Seine river.

The small Ulysses Bookstore is known as the oldest travel bookstore in
the world. It has more than 20,000 books, maps and magazines, out of
print and new, in a number of languages, about any country and any kind
of travel, all packed up in a tiny space. Catherine has been a
traveller since she was a child. She travels every summer - usually
sailing - while her boyfriend runs the bookstore. She is also a member
of the French National Union of Antiquarian and Modern Bookstores
(SLAM), the Explorers' Club and the International Club of Long-Distance
Travellers.

Catherine visited 140 countries, where she sometimes had a hard time.
But one of her most difficult challenges was to set up a website on her
own, from scratch, without knowing anything about computers. Catherine
wrote in December 1999: "My site is still pretty basic and under
construction. Like my bookstore, it is a place to meet people before
being a place of business. The internet is a pain in the neck, takes a
lot of my time and I earn hardly any money from it, but that doesn't
worry me..." Nevertheless, despite the internet, she was pessimistic
about the future. "I am very pessimistic, because the internet is
killing off specialist bookstores."

1995: ONLINE PRESS

[Overview]

The first electronic versions of print newspapers were available in the
early 1990s through commercial services like America Online and
CompuServe. In 1995, newspapers and magazines began creating their own
websites to offer a partial or full version of their latest
issue - available freely or through subscription (free or paid) - with
online archives. In Europe, the Times and the Sunday Times set up a
common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized
edition. The weekly publication The Economist also went online in UK,
as well as the weekly Focus and the weekly Der Spiegel in Germany, the
daily Le Monde and daily Liberation in Fran