French startup Booxuphas created an app allowing its users to borrow hard cover or paperback books from the libraries of other users. It launched its service last spring. This is how it works: a user uploads her library on Booxup, or, at least, the books she does not mind to lend, by scanning their bar codes. If a fellow user is interested in one of these books, he contacts her, and the two arrange the way the book will be provided to the borrower, from shipping to meeting at a café, as the site suggests (this is a French startup, after all).So Many Books, So Litle TimeBut an agent of the Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes (DGCCRF), the French consumer protection agency, recently visitedthe Booxup offices, apparentlyafter a person working in the book industry, whose identity is unknown, contacted the DGCCRF to express concerns over this business model. Indeed, Booxup uses a sharing economy model,…
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