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Google News Removes Belgian Newspaper
CaVi writes "Following a judicial action (link in French) by the 'French-speaking Belgian Association of the press,' Google.be has removed all the French-speaking press sites from its index, as can be seen by doing a search. The court order to Google is posted at Chilling Effects.
In summary, the editors want a cut of the profit that Google News makes using their information. No such deal exists for the moment. Google has been ordered to remove all references, or pay one million Euros per day if it doesn't comply. Net effect: they removed all link to the sites, from Google News, but also from Google's search. Will Google become irrelevant in Belgian, and be replaced by MSN? Or will the newspapers, which gain from commercials, and thus net traffic, change their position when they'll see the drop in traffic that it is causing?" There's also a link to a Dutch news article on the subject; one of the key issues was evidently that some of what Google was carrying was no longer available on the newspaper's website itself, so rather then linking to the newspaper, Google was displaying it on their own.
Someone "out there" is taking the piss, right? I once visited Belgium for three weeks and it became apparent quite quickly that there wasn't anything news-worthy going on. All they seem to have is really, really excellent beer.
Google should block the Newspaper's IP addresses so that their reporters cannot use Google in their research.
Stupid Flanders...
End transmission.
Here goes (in random order):
1) Dirk Frimout, 1st Belgian astronaut
2) Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone
3) Justine Henin-Hardenne, tennis player, current no. 2 in the WTA Tour
4) Kim Clijsters, currently 4th ranked female tennis player in the world
5) Tom Boonen, 2005 world cycling champion
6) Paul Van Ostaijnen, influential Modernist poet
7) Doctor Evil, evil doctor
8) The Smurfs (all of them)
9) Tintin, reporter (French-speaking, so all of his writing is now probably off Google)
10) Mark Dutroux, psychopath (Famous? Yes. Nice guy? No.)
No, you're talking about the wrong kind of famous person. I think the grandparent post meant the kind of famous people that most people have heard of.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I always warn people I know who are vacationing in Europe -- avoid Belgium. Who knows what else they will try to persecute you for there.
Belgium is like Washington DC: too many bureaucrats for their own good.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures ... and the Dutch.
Hmm. Another conspiracy by the evil cartographers? Did you know that more than 99% of all maps are made by cartographers? Definitely some sort of conspiracy going on here.
My blog
How does an American tourist fight a Belgian company telling them to remove "their" photos? Simple: take a photo of your hand showing the middle finger raised, and send it back to the Belgian company.
Belgian laws don't affect us here in the US.