Slashdot Mirror
Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News
An anonymous reader writes "Google has began removing web-based content of Paris-Based news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), from the Google News service. This past weekend we reported that the Agence France Presse had sued Google for displaying their photo's, stories, and news headlines on Google News without permission. AFP is seeking damages of around $17.5 million and requested the courts that Google News is not to display any of its copyrighted material. It appears Google is complying with what the AFP is requesting. Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman."
AFP doesn't make money of its web site... they make money from selling news pictures (to other web sites).
A lot of people seem to think that google was taking pictures from the AFP web site, and AFP sued them for it. That's not what happened. AFP sells a picture to, say, the New York Times. The Times puts this picture on the NYT site with the caption, "Photo by whoever, copyright 2005 Agency France Presse." Google then then takes this picture from the NYT site and puts it on the Google News front page. It has nothing to do with Google indexing the AFP site.