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Online Content Cannot Remain Free

Posted by Zonk on from the sez-you dept.

gamer4Life writes "Publishers from Europe are complaining that Internet search engines are making money off their copyright-protected material. 'This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.', says Francisco Pinto Balsemao, head of the European Publishers Council. These comments are despite the fact that Google does not place ads on their news service. 'Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web.', says Google spokesman, Steve Langdon. This comes after a French news service sued Google for at least $17.5 million."

2 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. robots.txt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Easy fix for the publishers.
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /
    Thank me later asshats!
  2. Cut them by femto · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Perhaps Google should just remove those who complain about copyright violations from their index? Site visitations would plummet and the complainer, and their copyright, would soon be consigned to irrelevance.

    The same would work with the RIAA. Don't want your stuff on the Internet? Fine just remove it and let people find other content to replace it. I'm sure lots of up and coming bands would welcome the lack of competition from the RIAA.