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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.
No linking. Gotta love it. Undermind the damn net! Undermine I say!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So google is sued for displaying content no longer available? Thus making the 3rd party source "less needed". Too bad the common american worker can't get together and sue big corporations for outsourcing jobs, thus making the american worker "less needed". Lets start a class action suite.
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.
I am more concerned with the over inclusion of "news" sites. The news feature on Google has been flooeded with blogs and other "new" media sources. I enjoy reading blogs, but they are often so scewed to the blogger's opinion that they need some additional context. I realize that mainstream media is often accused of bias as well, but at least I know who those stations are. The news feature is useless to me if I need to get past 200 blogs to find one legitimate source.
Google should block the Newspaper's IP addresses so that their reporters cannot use Google in their research.
As the old challenge goes, name 10 famous Belgians. Nice country and all but not exactly news central. In effect this is like Des Moines doing the same, and not even people in Des Moines would mind if they just had OTHER peoples news.
Maybe its the start of something, all really dull places will sue to have their very dull news removed. After all, if something interesting happens there then one of the majors will cover it.
$1m a day... nice sense of perspective.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Excellent suggestion. Imagine? Reciprocity...
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
There's no such thing as a language called 'Belgian.'
/.er's grasp on geography AND foreign languages.
They speak Dutch (Flemish), French, and German.
I sometimes wonder about the average
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
Using the same logic as described here, I could probably sue Google for some GPL violations.
Some web sites incorrectly send all their contents as text/plain or text/html, including binary files, images, etc. It looks like Google tries to automatically correct this, but is not always successful (this may depend on the amount of plain text contained in the binary file). Anyway, regardless of the reason why it happens, it seems to be possible to find a few binary files in the Google cache (not easy, but possible if you are lucky). And now comes the problem if one of these files is protected by the GPL: if Google distributes the binary file but not the sources, they would be violating the GPL.
Who is going to start a frivolous lawsuit against Google for GPL violations?
-Raphaël
What does "As can be seen by doing a search" mean? When I click the link I see lots of results from the site - I assumed that there were no results to be expected. Don't tell me the newspapers caved in so early...
Belguim is irrelevant anyway. Now that we can't find it through Google, it will quietly disappear in the back of the wardrobe, lost between Tanganyika and Cluj-Napoca.
Syncerus
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Belgians do not speak Belgian. They speak either French or a dialect of Dutch known as Flemish.
, 00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1604253
KFG
Stupid Flanders...
End transmission.
I think not for Google. It is funny.. that the newspapers don't keep their content, but are offended when somebody else picks up the ball for them.
In reality, there is value to keeping articles around, and I really wish that newspapers would take the initiative and do a better job with that.
Regardless, this is unfortunate. Perhaps the companies should just keep the articles around... and then they could make all this "money that google is making from the articles" for themselves.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
Nice one, post a google.com link to disprove comments about google.be. Let me break it down for you. .com != .be
By the way - I'm assuming the submitter meant "Will Google become irrelevent in Belgium" not the entire language, though the average /.er's grasp on geography makes me wonder sometimes.
... complicated, politically.
Belgium is a country with three official languages and three main regions - the Flemish-speaking Flanders (6 million people), the French-speaking Wallonia (3.3 million people) and the mostly-French-speaking, officially-bilingual capital Brussels (1 million people). Plus to add to the fun, there are 70,000 German-speakers in the east of the country.
There are some pretty harsh rivalries between the currently-financially-stable Flanders and the recession-hit Wallonia - it's impressive that the country hasn't split apart already. The situation is
But then Belgium's really dull and nothing happens here, right? I know otherwise, because I live here.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Well, ther really is no monopoly here. And the barrier of switching to some other search-engine is very low, so it's not like Google could force anyone to use their service. And like it or not, Google is under no obligation to serve those newspapers. Apparently they don't want to work with Google, so why should Google work for them?
And besides, payback is a bitch.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Wikipedia says it's 60/40 in favor of the dutch speaking part which sounds about right. Google indeed didn't remove all results, try googling for le soir and scrolling down:
In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 3 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.
Anyway, personally I don't know if I oppose this ruling. The way copyright is defined today it definitely sounds to me as if the newspapers have the law on their side in this. Google is effectively republishing their information. I think Google is most likely trying to justify it under citation rights which sounds about right to me, but we all know the interpretation by the courts is getting more and more conservative, following a worldwide move (led originally by the US btw) to a stricter copyright system. Which probably has a lot more to do with the music and movie industry than the print media.
Would those have strawberries, whipped cream, and blueberries?
I want some.
by the European court. Heck, it violates freedom of speech in essence. And, more importantly, linking/quoting has been proven to be not illegal in previous cases in the EU. Either they are all wrong, or the belgians are wrong. In my case, I come from the Netherlands, we know the answer ;=)
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
at least i live in the states, where you can't just sue companies because you are too dense to learn the rules (such as robots.txt)
oh wait..
-- lol pwned
This is not entirely clear, but it seems Google is abusing their near monopoly on search to strong arm their position in a new market of News.
The last numbers I saw placed Google as having about 45% of the search market. That isn't even in the running for being a monopoly.
Their have been ordered to remove other peoples news from their news service, and have decided to additional punish the source by also removing them from the search index.
As far as I can tell, there is no way in which this ruling applies to news.google.com that does not apply equally to google.com search. If one is ruled illegal by the courts, the other is probably just as illegal, so it makes sense to remove them from both.
I really thing Google should be allowed to link any news together in a news service, but escalating the issue to searching is really abusive and something I am quite sure they will be punished for in Europe. (Besides the obvious fact that it IS EVIL).
If Google had a monopoly, this could be an antitrust issue, but I've seen no evidence of that. There are a lot of players in the search market and Google has instituted absolutely no lock-in of any kind. Nothing stops Belgians from moving to something else, aside from the fact that the others tend to be lower quality. I don't foresee any antitrust action against them for this, nor any grounds for it. Since they don't wield monopoly influence in the market, I don't see how this is "evil."
The bottom line is that any creative work is copyrighted such that only the "author" can authorise copies. Google is depending on authors not enforcing their rights against them to prevent them from making numerous copies (and from providing a service to provide those copies to anyone with Google cache). If I was to setup a site which simply allowed visitors to search (and download) all the binaries online would Linus/FSF/Microsoft not be justified in challenging me for illegally distributing their copyrighted works?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I'm literally sick of all this people who don't like being indexed. If you don't want to show up in google, adjust robots.txt so that google won't search it. This is not a problem of "companies entering into your house because you left the door opened". Web sites are supposed to be there to be visited, if you don't like being indexed use robots.txt
Hey man, this is America! Love it or LEAVE it!!!
Damn foreigners.
;-)
If I understand this correctly, the principal problem is not Google News but rather Google Cache. It seems that when news articles move from public to subscriber-only, Google retrieved the contents from its cache, instead of removing the article. So the issue was that Google was distributing articles instead of only linking them.
The problem was that the newssite of French and German speaking Belgium had articles indexed by google (I believe it's about Le Soir), and that didn't pose any problem.
They changed the way the articles were accessible and made a "pay to view"-service, yet google had cached the newsarticles offering them "for free" (as the previously were offered publicly for free)
The problem for them was in how Google had a cache of something that wasn't free anymore, violating their copyright.
The link to the article on vrtnieuws as a Belgian newssite is misleading as vrtnieuws is a Flemish (Dutch speaking) newssite. In the audio fragment the interviewer wonders wherever it's not "good publicity" to have google link to your content and the specialist agrees with that how newssites "like" that, but explains the articles didn't link back to the website to the updated or removed content which posed the problem: their content being cached, freely accessable when they charged for it, and no link back to their webpage.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
The biggest joke of the whole affair is that these newspapers apparently never heared about a robots.txt file and neither did the 'expert' that adviced the court in this matter. If I were google I'ld setup a little farm that would visit every single page on their website every millisecond, just to make sure that the moment the newspaper takes an article offline it gets removed from google cache as well. :o)
...greed is the great destroyer.
Or, they removed them from the search to preclude getting sued for news articles that show up in a general search (as opposed to showing up on the news.google.com site). Sounds practical to me.
Bureaucracy loves company.
Neither does Microsoft on operating system. Yet their market share is significant enough that they have to obey monopoly rules.
Antitrust law is built around whether or not a company wields monopoly influence on a market. Many of the laws use 70% as the point at which such an influence should be investigated. Windows has something like 90% of the desktop market, and there are significant barriers to entry. Their monopoly influence is easily demonstrated by pricing that does not follow the curve of a free market.
Google has 45% or so and has gone out of their way to make sure they have not created any market lock-in or barriers to switching. You just point your browser to yahoo.com or msn.com. Their pricing is extremely competitive, and rigidly follows the free market influences. Lots of other companies make money in the same space.
Basically, antitrust laws should be applied to Microsoft to fix the broken market, but there is no evidence that they should applied to Google.
Yes, but the poster makes an important point. google.be is blocking the sites, but google.com is not. google.fr is not either.
.fr instead. It would be different if Google were removing lesoir.be and other sites from all searches (including google.com searches) by computers with Belgian IP addresses, but are they? If not, Belgians will probably switch to google.fr/.com rather than MSN.
.be. Could it be because .be servers are actually in Belgium, and thus are somehow legally affected? That's the only way I can think of that this block makes sense.
It seems like the block has no practical effect, since you can find everything by going to google.com or
I don't know why they did this for
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
Agreed - editors are the one thing why sites like slashdot are worthwhile compared with digg. If you only want to read random shit written by monkeys digg is unbeatable, slashdot should be different
First of all, I have no evidence to suggest that Google is not strong arming the entire French speaking population of Belgium (or at least their news services. I think it would be more reasonable, however, to consider that faced with a fine of $1 million a day, they took the most efficient route of removing the listings from Google News.
Also, IDNSF (I do not speak French), but the summary seems to suggest that the content needed to be removed from Google's "cache" as well. It may be that because of the language used, the ruling required removal of the listings from the search index as well...
If you would look at the submitter's text, and the fact that the submitter's URL is .be, it might occur to you that the submitter isn't a native Engish speaker, and figure he made a simple mistake. In fact, you might even surmise that the submitter is Belgian, and would therefore not be likely to be confused about what languages are spoken in Belgium.
Even if you're going to be a pedant, in the sentence "Will Google become irrelevant in Belgian, and be replaced by MSN?", 'Belgian' could just as easily be read as a mistaken use of the adjective form instead of the noun form, i.e. "Will Google become irrelevant in Belgium...".
And I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on basic logic and common decency.
-Esme
I sometimes wonder about the average
Maybe because they are too busy grasping something else?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
GP was not replying to the submitter, but to a reply to the story. That reply said:
Donate free food here
I still see "La Libre Belgique" a french speaking newspaper
But when I do this: http://news.google.be/news?ned=fr_beIt's not there anymore.
Guess what Belgians will do next? BTW there is no such thing as Belgian waffles, Canadian Bacon, or Filet Americain. Right about the beer though!Yeah that whoosh sound should have been a dead giveaway, but apparently not. Thanks for clarifying my post though. I too thought someone with a .be address should have known that Belgian is not a language, but alas...
'Dutch'?!?! Don't the Dutch speak Hollondaise?
You mean I can't read earth-shattering news exclusively put on french-speaking, .be domains anymore? Whatever will we do now? Dear Jesus.. how will I survive when such a huge part of the internets has been torn away? How many tubes are left, oh harsh harsh world?
In all seriousness, I didn't know the french-speaking press of the Belgian world was so damn stupid. Most of their traffic probably comes from people accidentally clicking on links from google. Why would they do this? Money?
That's like kidnapping Dubya in Egypt and asking the Arabs for a ransom.
Actually, I submitted the story, previewed it, to only discover later that I typed 'Belgian' instead of 'Belgium'. Sorry for the confusion. Sorry also if the text was not clear. Wouldn't it be good if there were any editors at Slashdot to correct obvious mistakes? ;) And yes, I'm not a native english speaker. Thanks for defending me!
-- No signature yet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Will Google become irrelevant in Belgian [sic]?
Or will Belgium become irrelevant on Google?
So say we all
thats it! no more belgian chocolate for me! no more money for these belgian burgersmeisters
A little bit of forward looking perhaps? Nearly half of the search market is very substantial. Ok they may not 'officially' be classed as a monopoly but they're well on the way. You're also right theres nothing to stop anyone from moving to a different search engine, oh wait except the fact that hits would flatline overnight...
Just to clarify, the Flemish speaking region (Flanders)that vrt servers (it's actually the state broadcaster) is in Belgium, so I don't see the confusion caused by calling it a Belgian news service, unless you doubt the existence of Belgium (and let's not get in to that here).
I'm going over here and I don't know why!
I've started using RSS feeds instead of going to multiple sites for my news. I don't want to rely on a single outlet for my news, and at the same time, I would like to be able to choose which feeds I get. I just go to my rss reader and grab all the feeds I want.
Google will not become irrelavant, if they are smart, because they have an online rss reader - Google Reader. It's still under "Google Labs", but if they started pushing this service where the news organizations are not allowing them. They could still pick up the ad revanue, and with less effort on their part.
I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on geography AND foreign languages.
Well, to be fair, one can't really have any sort of "intuitive" grasp of either the geographic, political or linguistic makeup of Belgium unless one is first aware that it is formed from part of the lowlands which were borderland territories disputed over the course of centuries between the Capetian and Hapsburg dynasties.
The closest American rough analog would be the state of Vermont (formed of territories disputed between New York and New Hamphire, where both French and English were spoken), but most Americans don't know that Vermont fought against the British in the revolution not as one of the original 13 colonies, but as an independent nation, not becoming the 14th state until 1791.
So that analog will not aid their understanding.
KFG
Great! At least one brave soul spottted the actual gist of the matter!
Leffe, anyone?
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Apparently, they have ordered these large fines thanks to the attitude of Google.
;"
;"
;"
For example, google wasn't present in court and they didn't collaborate at all in the investigation.
So the newspapers won by default. Google "indifferent" attitude apparently annoyed the court, so they basically granted the demands of the newspaper.
For some reason that part isn't translated in the english version of the court document, but here it is (in French - quoted from the court documents) and a rough translation, done by myself, follows each quotes:
1."Attendu que le tribunal de céans ne manque pas d'être
surpris par l'attitude de la défenderesse qui n'a pas jugé utile
de participer à' la mission d'expertise, malgré les invitations
qui lui avaient été adressées par l'expert judiciaire, et qui ne
comparaît pas
Translation:
The court is surprised by the attitude of the defendant which hasn't
found useful to participate in the expert evaluation[...]and who
aren't present in court.
2."Attendu que cette attitude constitue une indication de ce que
les craintes que nourrit la demanderesse sur la mauvaise
volontk que mettra à la d4fenderesse à s'exécuter pourraient
être fondées
Translation:
This attitude is an indication that the fears of the plaintiff
about the bad faith of the defendant might be justified.
3."Que l'attitude de la défenderesse est d'autant plus
surprenante que dans d'autres pays, cettes plus importants
que la Belgique, la défenderesse s'est engagée dans des
négociations avec les 4diteurs de journaux pour résoudre la
question du respect des droits d'auteur
Translation:
That the attitude of the defendant is more so surprising
that in other countries, certainly bigger than Belgium,
the defendant had been negociating with newspapers editors to
solves the copyrights and intellectual properties issues.
Also, the court order isn't just about the Soir Libre newspaper, but about all newspapers editors, journalists, etc represented by cafepresse.
First of all : it is pretty complex to explain our Belgian laws to you.. but I'll try! If you read the complete text there are several important points : - first of all Google wasn't in the courtroom to defend themselves, this leaves a whole procedure open for them to react. (but do they care?) - your robot.txt makes no sense here, that's an opt-out. In Belgium everything has to be opt-in. - all newspapers are strong entities in Belgium, nobody searches them in Google, everyone just types the newspaper name, followed by .be
- the main argument was brought to the judge by a court expert. They
did some tests by removing articles on some newspaper websites (for example : wrong info,
re-edited articles) but Google News would still show them.
This is a major issue here. You have to know we have a special database law (1992)
in Belgium. This law prohibits the commercial use, non-commercial transaction of databases
between entities and.. the creation of a database (whatever data) without the explicit knowledge
of those who are "databased"..
For the judge it was clear that Google made a "database" of the articles - so case closed.
(although i think "google cache" is not the same as "a database")
As a Belgian I'm proud we have the strongest privacy laws in the world (really, study them..),
but the database law is now used in a copyright infringement suit.
(where in the past, it was mainly used to protect individuals)
Besides of all these things : we still are slammed with arguments like "google making money with the news".
But everyone can see there are no ads on news.google.be
For your info : the flemish part of the belgian newspapers just asked
Google not to be indexed, and Google had no problem with that.
In my opinion and after reading the verdict several times,
Google would win the case with just a 0 sec. cache
If nothing happens in Belgium - why did Caesar call us the bravest?
Score:-1, Offtopic? My ass! The poster above has a very good point (and I am not he). The summary is very disjointed and difficult to read. Offtopic huh? Bullshit, its exactly on topic. Where else was he supposed to post that obseravtion, in another thread? Quit sucking slashass, moderators or you're going to suck the colon right out of them, then what will you do?
Everone knows that Belgium doesn't exist...
I initially thought it might've been misleading as to identify vrtnieuws as the newssite having filed the lawsuit, because it's the only "Belgian newssite" linked. But I've read too quickly over the summary to see it was never implied.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Aren't their news and general search one and the same though? One is just a little more automated way of pulling news stories for you.
Also, Google is not a near monopoly in Europe. Only in the US do they serve something like 87% of the searches.
From a quick glance at the ruling on chilling effects, the defene google put together (citing copyright law, database laws, etc) was not valid.
The ruling specifically talks about google's "cache". This would include the search cache.
In other words, they probably have good legal advice to remove these sites from the search cache (not just news) because these companies would be able to sue them again with exactly the same complaint for having their content in the search index.
It would be a legal liability to keep them in the search index.
A little bit of forward looking perhaps? Nearly half of the search market is very substantial.
Sure, but with no lock-in there is little likelihood of a monopoly, especially while competing against a monopoly in a different market that is tying their search.
Ok they may not 'officially' be classed as a monopoly but they're well on the way.
"Well on their way?" what does that mean? They don't show any monopoly influence on the market.
You're also right theres nothing to stop anyone from moving to a different search engine, oh wait except the fact that hits would flatline overnight...
So there are two customers here, advertisers and searchers. Nothing stops searchers from switching. Nothing stops advertisers from using multiple services. No barrier exists except product quality.
There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures ... and the Dutch.
Hercule Poirot
Damn Flanders! They've been rubbing it in our noses since we got here! Their families are better than our families, their beer comes from farther away than our beer, they like each other, their wives butts are higher than our wives butts! They make me sick!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I am not curious enough to go through and check, but Google should be blocking French and German language papers, while allowing other Belgian sites (Flemish and foreign-language [English?]) to be indexed. Are they going to just stop indexing all Belgian sites?
As well, there are many French language papers which are not based in Belgium. Are they being blocked?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
The newspaper have made it clear they do not want their content cached by Google. Now, you may or may not be aware of this, but it's not just Google news that does caching, the main search does it too. So, how is Google meant to link to the news site without caching any data? This is less an example of Google exercising some monopolistic strong arm tactics and more an example of how a news site getting greedy and not understanding the web can come back to bite them in the behind. It's less evil, and more ironic.
To search things Google needs an archive of the site. Read the ruling. It basically says Google can't build such an archive, because it is "copying". So what would you suggest Google do?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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?
I reckon there's no way that'd happen. I can count the number of people I know who use Google News on one hand (here in Europe). It's really not that popular. I'd be surprised if even 1% of their audience was using it.
escalating the issue to searching is really abusive
Why?
Google just got sued by these guys for indexing their site. When you lose a lawsuit with ignorant assholes (i.e. anyone running a business on the web who doesn't use robots.txt and then complains about being indexed), the safest thing to do is make completely sure there's nothing left by which they can leverage that lawsuit into something like a contempt complaint.
Of course, not being indexed by Google can apparently be the basis for a lawsuit, too. Damned if you do...
Log in or piss off.
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
Yes, because America never extends its influence outside its own borders. And no, I'm not talking about Iraq. *cough*DMCA*cough*patents*cough*.
http://outcampaign.org/
and Americans don't speak American!
You don't think Google is going to do everything in its power to become a monopoly? Sure they've seen software lock-ins draw critisism (ala Microsoft) but there are other ways of establishing monopolies and strong arming customers into submission is a good start.
You say anyone can switch but if the product works and nobody knows any better why are they going to switch? Obviously Google are going to try to minimise awareness of monopolistic practices so I just don't think towing the line is something we should be doing with Google right now.
I believe they were only required to remove links from Google News, but for whatever reasons they decided to effectively eradicate the site from Google completely. Read into that what you will.
> I believe they were only required to remove links from Google News, but for whatever reasons they decided to effectively eradicate the site from Google completely.
;)
As a Pastafarian, I do not share your beliefs
The newspapers wanted their sites removed from Google Cache. Google can't search a site it can't cache, so the sites got removed from Google entirely. I think that is what they wanted.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
"...one of the key issues was evidently that some of what Google was carrying was no longer available on the newspaper's website itself,..."
How can these papers expect to rewrite history if their old articles can be found, unfiltered, on Google Cach?
This violation of these news papers Intellectual Property must be stopped for the public good.
Their copyright was always being violated.
Google post a link the Chilling Effects with the court order
This is almost as funny as one of those Japanese instruction manuals
http://engrish.com/
Agreed - editors are the one thing why sites like slashdot are worthwhile compared with digg. If you only want to read random shit written by monkeys digg is unbeatable, slashdot should be different
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.
You don't think Google is going to do everything in its power to become a monopoly? Sure they've seen software lock-ins draw critisism (ala Microsoft) but there are other ways of establishing monopolies and strong arming customers into submission is a good start.
Google doesn't have any leverage to strong arm customers until they have an effective monopoly influence. As such, they can do all sorts of things that a monopoly cannot, without having negative effects upon the market. They may well develop a monopoly, simply by providing a superior product. There is nothing wrong with that. What potentially is a problem is if they develop a monopoly and they abuse that monopoly to take over other markets (news aggregation). Until they have a monopoly, however, they have no ability to abuse one, and it is pointless to guess whether or not they will both establish one and abuse it.
You say anyone can switch but if the product works and nobody knows any better why are they going to switch?
To get the best product.
Obviously Google are going to try to minimise awareness of monopolistic practices so I just don't think towing the line is something we should be doing with Google right now.
Towing the line?!? What the hell does that even mean? Google is not a monopoly. Even if they were a monopoly, they had to remove this particular paper from both their news aggregation and search, because that is what the court demanded. So we have a company that is not a monopoly taking action that would not be monopolistic even if they were a monopoly. Where is the problem?
I believe they were only required to remove links from Google News, but for whatever reasons they decided to effectively eradicate the site from Google completely. Read into that what you will.
So you believe Google indexing has some value to this newspaper, yet they paid exactly nothing to Google for this service. It seems to me they have absolutely no claim. If I'm receiving free electricity but complain to the power company about the power lines on my property, I can't very well complain if they cut me off when they remove the lines.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Believe, in the sense 'as far as I'm aware', in the sense 'I should've have read the artical more thoroughly'. Let it be stated I don't actually spiritualy believe that Google removed the links.
Something still doesn't sit right though, why would they want or even risk being removed from the largest search engine?
Nah. The newspaper's webmaster should just learn how to use the 'NOCACHE,NOARCHIVE' tag.
That's like saying you need a "No trespassing" board - otherwise, it's fair game
for trespassers.
Surely some Americans have heard of Eddy Merckx.
I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on geography AND foreign languages.
I hate to tell you this, but Belgium is not a major country. Do you happen to know what languages are commonly spoken in Zaire or Kenya? Or what the different ethnicities of the people in Chile are? What languages are commonly spoken in India (all of them, please)? What are the common languages spoken in Liechtenstein and Monaco? These questions are akin to asking what languages are common in Belgium.
If we were talking about the UK, France, Germany, or Italy, you might have a valid complaint about people not knowing a little about what languages are spoken there. But I think it's quite acceptable for someone on a different continent to have to do some research to find out about tiny countries like Andorra, Luxembourg, and Belgium.
Why wouldn't they pursue the same arrangement that's been made with The New York Times? AFAIK, all the NYT articles are indexed by google while maintaining the restricted access for visitors. I think they do it by GoogleBot's IP/subnet.
body massage!
Google will simply drop any links to the site.
The question is what will the news paper do now that they've "won" and become invisible on the internet?
The victory is a Phyric one at best.
Nobody will ever be referred to their site when they are searching for the information on Google.
Its stupid and self-destructive.
The paper will eventually fold from lack of readership while their neighbors across the street, who can still be found on the web, will go on...
Who cares?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They speak actually speak Dutch (Flemish), French (Wallon), and German.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...AFP sued Google in 2005 for the same reasons.
It's really hard to say how this would affect Google's positions in Belgium but what I noticed is that people here, especially the youth, lots of them are really affected by MS services. I mean 9 e-mails out of 10 belongs to hotmail and the second thing you might be asked (after your GSM number) is what's your MSN?
Though Google search is really at the top here. Even guys at the universities recommends using it.
I am sure they will find some kind of agreement. I wouldn't like to lose all the results coming from Le Soir, La Libre or whatever. And I surely won't change my favourite search engine.
Then again, Dutch speaking Belgians aren't Dutch, but Flemish. The Dutch are the people from The Netherlands.
It's not that I don't get the joke or anything, but I just wanted to clear that up.
whoosh . . .
everything in moderation
You actually know all this off the top of your head? Sounds like you have too much time on your hands for useless knowledge, unless you have some sort of special interest in these things.
And why would you call the common languages in Liechtenstein and Monaco "a matter of general knowledge", but not all the common languages spoken in India? Perhaps a bias? You didn't even mention Tamil, which is widely spoken in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and also in Sri Lanka. Many Tamils don't even speak Hindi, nor do they care to. Or what about Telugu?
So do you think there's something wrong with me, as an American, because I know about Indian languages and not European ones spoken in tiny, obscure European countries with entire populations smaller than my own city?
Also, you're wrong about Liechtenstein. The question was what the common languages are: in Liechtenstein, it's "Allemanic", a highly divergent dialect of German. And in Zaire, the common languages (again, the question was NOT what the official languages are) are Lingala, Kikongo, Swahili, and Tshiluba, and these are actually referred to as "national" languages in Wikipedia. Why don't you know all this off the top of your head?
I'm sorry, but there's little reason for most inhabitants of large first-world countries to know facts like these. If we need to find out, that's why we invented the Internet and Wikipedia (and of course regular books and encyclopedias before that). The only reason we'd ever need to know trivial facts about tiny countries like Liechtenstein or Belgium is if we planned to visit, which simply isn't very likely for most people on a different continent, as we are. So cut out the "general knowledge" crap. It isn't. It's trivia.
Probably Google send the newspapers the instructions on how to prevent being cached, and considered the case done. If they insist shooting themselves in the foot, let it be.
...for your comics, as well.
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
You forgot a 3rd option: these 13,000 people are breaking copyright law (I guess, as long as they publish it in Belgium, though IANAL). /.'er would know that it's not because you can find content on the internet, that it is legal...
I would think a
References for that: Google for http://www.google.com/search?q=atomium+sabam (SABAM is the Belgian RIAA)...
(So, mod grandparent up, and parent down...)
Editors? You must be new here. :) Either that, or you're like me, and you're eternally optimistic, no matter how stupid a position that may be at times.
No, they speak French, and then Dutch and German :-)
(just kidding)
How nice for you that your parents were rich enough to send you off to travel the world and eat fried rats. Most of us haven't been off the continent. So just because you might know a lot of this crap because you've actually been there doesn't mean you can expect Joe Sixpack to know any of it, even if he does have a college degree.
What the heck kind of job do you have where you have a need for speaking several languages and travelling to all the continents of the world anyway?
Some can, not all. It's not just from what particular site it is from, but who wrote it that makes the difference. And on some of the big ones, there is so much on written by the big names that is pure crap, while the really good stuff gets buried. Gotta know who's who.
FYI, vrtnieuws.net also has an English section. Here's the article: Google sentenced in Belgian court.
Think American English vs UK English.
Each of which has many subdialects as well.
KFG
That's a lot better than what usually happens: I click a link from experts-exchange because google has the full text (but won't show it to you from cache) and you have to pay to actually view the article. Which, I might add, ought to be against the rules of google, and grounds for a delisting. Unfortunately, google seems to be party to this (kickbacks?) because they explicitly don't display cached pages from a lot of these sites, but they obviously have the cache with the full material, because they can show me part of it in the search results.
Anyone have a search plugin tool that will remove some sites from the google results? I know you can exclude sites in your search terms, but you only get ten of those, and there are probably dozens of sites like this.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Terrible analogy. For one thing, you'd call the police to deal with a robbery.
And you have to resolve the difference between private and semi-public property. If you allow anyone into your lobby to take pictures, then decide that you don't want to let anyone in anymore, do you have any sort of right to prevent people from publishing pictures they've already taken? If you didn't require them to sign some sort of agreement?
The law might say you have some control over access to your property, but common sense would suggest that you can't change your mind on the policy and retroactively apply that policy.
I pity the fool who tries to argue common sense in any modern courtroom, though...
c.
Log in or piss off.
Actually, no, you don't. You have to scroll down, down down, past a couple of screenfuls of ads, and then you'll get the answers. Took me a long long time to realise this, but there you go.
Aw, crap. Yeah...
My pathetic excuse is that I was tired when I wrote that.
http://outcampaign.org/
As with their french speaking breathren, Quebec has some funny notions. That is why some girl was able to successfully sue a photographer for taking her picture while she was sitting in a public place. It doesn't say in this article, but from what I can remember of it (it was a few years ago), she was a homeless person, and the photographer was doing some sort of editorial piece for some publication. I had to shake my head a groan when I read it the first time... actually, I still do even when I read it now.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
They speak Dutch, German or French. Flemish is not a language, it is, as you say, a dialect. There are many more dialects spoken in Belgium. Each town has its own dialect.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What google is doing and almost everybody else here is pointing towards robots.txt. For me that is an opt-out. Apparently when it is google, t is OK. It is just when Joe Spammer uses it as an excuse, it is BAD.
:-(
Why not have nobody indexed, exept those that want to. Will that ever be done? No. Will then even more garbadge be indexed then now? Yes.
Yet an opt-in is the only logical way to handle things.
Google indexes my site. This gives Google an added value. Google does not pass this on to me. Also Google is not 'free'. It is gratis, just like TV and in returnd wants me to watch ads.
So even as great as Google (or any other searchengine) is, it should have been opt-in from the start. Now it is too late.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Flemish is not a language, it is, as you say, a dialect.
That's what I . . .
Damn, you didn't leave me anywhere to go, you bastard.
KFG
Was it always that way? I refuse to believe that I'm actually this stupid :/
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, that is rich. Brussels, you may have heard the name of that town. Brussels is the political capital of Europe.
The funniest thing is when somebody pretnding to be wise, stumbles on the first stone. Zaire was renamed, ages ago. Go and find the name of the country and then come back and apologize. They speak French btw amongst many native languages (the country is the size of Westerm Europe). In Kenya they speak English and if memory serves me well Masai and some Arabic.
Chile? Easy: Amerindians (if you want the names of the tribes go and fluffify yourself), Caucasian mostly of Spanish origin and mixed from the two above.
Languages in India? Hindi, English, Guajarti, Punjabi, Tamil, etc. (but since they speak several hundreds I'll leave it at that).
Liechtesntein? German.
Monaco? French. The casino is overrated.
You either have culture or don't, making excuses for it does not make it any better.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But they would be all footballers and cyclists.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That's pretty much what the whole article and the lawsuit are about: either they're idiots, or they have some ulterior motive.
I think that they were probably hoping to use the suit and rulings as leverage in order to wring some money out of Google, and that's why they didn't take the cheap and simple way out and just use a robots.txt file, which I have to imagine even the most backwards webmaster has heard about.
Frankly I foresee this sort of thing becoming all too common in the near future; as people move from traditional sources of news and information (particularly newspapers) to more timely and convenient methods (the internet), you're going to see a desperate effort on the part of traditional media outlets to get a cut of the pie, lest they go out of business. In my opinion, they don't deserve a cut and should probably be allowed to wither; if their demise means that there's no content for Google to display on the news.google.com page, then Google can go out and hire journalists to discover it. Or they'll just buy it from the wire services like the newspapers did anyway, meaning that you'll finally have the system split as it always should have been: you have people dedicated to researching and reporting the news (e.g., Reuters), and then you have other people who are dedicated to packaging together that news into things that customers want to read, and delivering it to them (e.g., Google News, CNN).
The newspaper as a business model is obsolete; there is no reason why the same organization that actually has the reporters needs to or ought to be the same organization that does the publication.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Google News doesn't republish the information with their own ads; all they do is provide you a list of links from traditional news sources' sites along with the first sentence or two of the article, so you can click on it. To read any full article on Google News, you end up looking at the publishing newspaper's advertising. (Unless you're running AdBlock, of course.)
As far as I can tell, the newspaper's complaint actually isn't even about Google News, it's about Google's cache on the regular search results page. They didn't have a robots.txt file, so Google cached the page. Now they're upset about that, but it's pretty much established procedure on the internet that unless you put up a robots.txt file, spiders can and will cache your page; this is how Google works, it's how the Internet Archive works, and I'm sure it's how lots of other search engines work.
Rather than putting up a robots.txt file like everybody else, these newspapers decided to try and go to court and squeeze some money out of Google, and as a result Google dumped them from their systems completely; the cache, regular search results, and Google News.
Personally I don't have much sympathy for the newspapers; they're hanging on to a dying business model that's rapidly becoming obsolete, and history has shown that such stances are generally not productive. They need to either find a way to work with the new ways that people want to get content, or get out of the way. It seems that intentionally or not, they're choosing the latter.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."