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.

Comments

Ah, Belgium

[C4st13v4n14]

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.

Re:Ah, Belgium

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I once visited Belgium for three weeks and it became apparent quite quickly that there wasn't anything news-worthy going on.

You didn't happen to spot the European Union Parliament Buildings did you? ....oh wait.

Re:Ah, Belgium

[Maxo-Texas]

I don't know... looking on google, I don't find anything happening in Belgium.

Re:Ah, Belgium

[tarscher]

We also have very good chocolate, waffles and child molesters.

Better than over inclusion of "News" Sites

[Hellad]

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.

Block IPs?

[DzugZug]

Google should block the Newspaper's IP addresses so that their reporters cannot use Google in their research.

Re:Block IPs?

[h00pla]

Nah. The newspaper's webmaster should just learn how to use the 'NOCACHE,NOARCHIVE' tag.

Re:Block IPs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed the point of the comment.

The newspaper is upset with Google because they link to their site without sharing in any of the profit the make through advertising; but google links to everyone's site without sharing any advertizing and if everyone reacted the same way these newspapers did it would become impossible to search the internet for anything.

Anyways ...

Like most people (I imagine) I rarely remember the address of sites I wish to visit and usually google for them; now that these papers decided being refrenced by google was a bad thing I bet their site viewership goes way down and they lose a lot of money from advertizing.

Re:Block IPs?

[OECD]

The newspaper's webmaster should just learn how to use the 'NOCACHE,NOARCHIVE' tag.

Bingo. If " 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." is accuarate, they failed to avail themselves of the quick, easy, and cheap solution. Obviously, that's not what it really was about.

I don't understand why news outlets get so upset when sites like google point people to their content. They should think of it as free advertising.

Re:Block IPs?

[ergo98]

I don't understand why news outlets get so upset when sites like google point people to their content. They should think of it as free advertising.

And a lot of people see it as exactly that, and are thankful for the traffic Google sends their way. I get about 140 referrals from Google a day, and am very welcoming to the Google spiders.

Nonetheless, this argument is very similar to the "Musicians should see Napster as an advertising medium to sell concert tickets" debate — some musicians do, while others don't, and it isn't really fair for people to declare that those who don't should just suck it and tow the line.

In this case the creators of the actual content (or the people who paid AP or CP or UP or Reuters or whoever originated the content — they do have to pay them, and can't say "Well we're giving Reuters free advertising!") decided that they didn't consider it kosher as simply free advertising, and the model didn't work for them. They asked Google to start either sharing some of the lucre that Google is making from the server — and google is making a lot of money from these sorts of services, and they aren't doing it because of benevolence – or stop acting as repeaters for their content.

Seems reasonable to me.

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[TheAngryMob]

There's no such thing as a language called 'Belgian.'

They speak Dutch (Flemish), French, and German.

I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on geography AND foreign languages.

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[kfg]

Belgians do not speak Belgian. They speak either French or a dialect of Dutch known as Flemish.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1604253, 00.html

KFG

French?

[evil agent]

Stupid Flanders...

Big loss?

[HatchedEggs]

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.

Re:Don't worry its Belgium

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

ice 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.

Hmm, you have a very different perspective than I. I've always viewed Belgium as one of those countries with disproportionate influence. As the location for the NATO headquarters, they've always been sort of representative of Europe, and now with the headquarters of the EU there as well, it is semi-official. I've always viewed it as sort of a hub, where influential Europeans meet to make decisions. But, I've never been there, so maybe my perspective is skewed.

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[Ford Prefect]

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.

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 ... complicated, politically.

But then Belgium's really dull and nothing happens here, right? I know otherwise, because I live here.

Re:Abusing monopoly

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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."

What about robots.txt?

[diegocgteleline.es]

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

Re:What about robots.txt?

[malkavian]

Of course they have a right to exert control over it. But as a standard, most places would like their content indexed (how much work would it take to have an opt-in for every subdirectory on a site where content may belong to different authors?).
If they don't, as has happened, they stated "We do not want Google to index our pages without paying us lots of money, as google make money off the indexing and finding", and Google promptly took them out of the News and Search.
Now, they have exactly what they asked for. Google will make nothing from them.
However, as always happens, they didn't actually stop to think what this would REALLY mean. They called Google's bluff, expecting to make a lot of money from the deal. Google didn't bluff and said "Ok then, you're on your own".
Now, they're on their own, and will definitely lose the ongoing money obtained through the search engine hits Google provided to them (gratis, and subsidised only by their own index adverts on the way there. Everybody pays for PR after all).

Now, if things change to the point that all sites need to have something to opt in, on a per directory basis (otherwise you end up with a clash), or even per file (for the same reasons), the whole concept of indexing the web becomes impossible, or at least vastly more difficult. For example, you'd need to stamp a file that you wanted indexed using extensions to existing HTML, or in meta fields. And as a goodly many people who put pages up want them indexed, and use tools, then the tools will soon start having defaults of the 'index me' stamp. And then we're back to square one with more traffic being used uselessly.
So, you can either choose the opt out (and get free advertising into the bargain), and opt out where you wish, or choose a way that breaks the whole model for everyone.

RTF ruling

[LordEd]

Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from all their sites (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000.- per day of delay;

All sites, not just news. It seems that the news site wants to punish itself.

The problem is Google Cache, I think

[reynaert]

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.

Re:Can we get some editing here please?

[ZeroExistenZ]

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.

Re:Don't worry its Belgium

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical example of different point of perceptions and the problem of Wikipedia:

Erasmus was Belgian but Belgium was part of the Netherlands back then, hence the misconception that he was born in the "southern netherlands".

Same deal with Descartes (and I'm talking about the cartographer). He was definatly Belgian, you can even visit the house he was born here.

Re:Don't worry its Belgium

[AxminsterLeuven]

As the old challenge goes, name 10 famous Belgians.

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.)

Why only google.be, not google.com/.fr?

[Gregory Cox]

Yes, but the poster makes an important point. google.be is blocking the sites, but google.com is not. google.fr is not either.

It seems like the block has no practical effect, since you can find everything by going to google.com or .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.

I don't know why they did this for .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.

Re:Can we get some editing here please?

[diegocgteleline.es]

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

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[esme]

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...".

I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on geography AND foreign languages.

And I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on basic logic and common decency.

-Esme

Re:Don't worry its Belgium

[kamapuaa]

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.

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[CaVi]

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!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Let's play BREAK THE INTERNET!

[waynelorentz]

Can't say I'm surprised. They have some strange legal notions in Belgium that don't match up with the rest of the civilized world. I got C&D from a Belgian company through a law firm in New York. The Belgian company claims to own the copyright to my vacation photos (with me standing in them!). The law firm (acting on behalf of the Belgians) demanded I take them off my web site or they'd sue me into oblivion.

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.

Re:Let's play BREAK THE INTERNET!

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

Belgium vs Google : some accurate info

[Dretio from Belgium]

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

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[Andrewkov]

There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures ... and the Dutch.

Re:How important is French to the Belgians?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as a language called 'Belgian.'
They speak Dutch (Flemish), French, and German.
I sometimes wonder about the average /.er's grasp on geography AND foreign languages.

I don't care what they call their language as long as they stay in South America where they belong.

Re:Let's play BREAK THE INTERNET!

[dehuit]

can't say I'm surprised. They have some strange legal notions in Belgium

Yeah, one stupid company and the whole country should be avoided. Expert advice, Wayne!

This is quite a sensible decision by the belgian court, I think. Several newspapers offer the news of today for free on their websites, and let you pay for searching the archives. Google caches those pages and offers them for free with their own ads added. Plain and simple copyright violation, no arguing around it. But quite convenient of course...

Re:Abusing monopoly

[c]

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...

Re:Can we get some editing here please?

[morgan_greywolf]

unless you doubt the existence of Belgium (and let's not get in to that here).

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.

Re:Let's play BREAK THE INTERNET!

[glesga_kiss]

but it seems to me that here in the USA and most other similar countries (e.g. UK), anything that's out in a public place (outdoor sculptures, buildings, etc.) can be photographed as much as you like.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but this has definitely happened in Chicago

Re:Let's play BREAK THE INTERNET!

[Grishnakh]

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.