Google Relents, Publishes Belgian Ruling

gambit3 writes "Google on Saturday published on its Belgian website a court order which forbids the Internet search engine to reproduce snippets of Belgian press on its news amalgamation service. The move constituted a u-turn as Google had said on Friday that it would not comply with the court order despite facing a fine of 500,000 euros ($640,900) daily if it did not publish the ruling." From the article: "Google said its service is lawful and drives traffic to newspaper sites because people need to click through to the original publisher to read the full story. It now displays stories from news agencies, foreign newspapers and Internet sites belonging to local television stations."

Comments

Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you read it in China?

Re:Yes, but...

[mattjb0010]

Yes, I just checked.

Copyright is copyright

[MLopat]

I am all for fair use. But the fact that Google copies, changes, reassembles, etc. copyrighted information without anyone's consent should be challenged. The challenge, while difficult to overcome at first may potentially lead to Google winning the case and setting a precedent whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain or at least break ground for fair use.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Mateo_LeFou]

Fair use is a longstanding element of copyright that "content owners" (sic) were hoping we would all just eventually forget about. Google's indexing of information (even if it involves copying without permission) is a perfect example of fair use, and hopefully this case will be high-profile enough to get people asking questions about this stuff

Re:Copyright is copyright

[mattso]

Indexing would be fine and fair use. But that isn't what Google does. It copies wholesale and republishes what it copied (via it's cache feature). While the world+dog may think Google is a great and super useful tool, it doesn't change the fact that it is also is based on the assumption that they can do any damn thing they want with other people's content. But as always, free content is more important than protecting the content's owners rights to commercially exploit it, at least on Slashdot.

Go Google. King of evil.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[kfg]

. . .setting a precedent whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain . . .

That'll solve the problem alright, by eliminating publication to the web, so they'll be no news to search for. Go buy a paper.

KFG

Re:Copyright is copyright

[iminplaya]

...and hopefully this case will be high-profile enough to get people asking questions about this stuff

I wouldn't count on it. The world has acquired a few other items over the last five years that need much more urgent attention. I don't think copyright is that high on the list. Nor should it be. It is an issue for the corporations to fight out. Quit buying their products, build bullet-proof servers, and the issue will disappear into the night. It is so petty to the point of being ridiculous. We need to concentrate on stopping the torturing and the wars, and putting our governments into their proper place as public servants.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[mindtriggerz]

No, Google works under the premise that if you put it on the Internet you're giving people a licence to read it.
As for them changing the content, where are they doing that? Truncating it, sure, but no real modifications.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Meltir]

So....
is this the same case as:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/13/15 32230 ?

If so then the summary (and TFA) got it wrong from what i can tell.
That case wasnt so much about google indexing the pages and putting them up on news.google.com, it was about google caching the pages that were free and keeping the cache when they werent free anymore (aka paid archive access).

Is this even the same case ?
The prev summary mentioned 1 mil$ this one is talking about half a mil, but they look pretty much the same to me...
Looks like google might be dropping the .be market altogether, and i wouldnt be surprised if other search engines would follow its lead.
Its one thing when your restricted not to publish data containing some words (china, anyone?), its another thing when your not allowed to cache, index and read ANY content whatsoever and later show it unless getting every single bloggers/newspapers/sites author's approval (assuming this: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196836&cid =16130458 is correct).

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain

Well, good. Copyrightist fucks have far too much power, and that power stems from their control over information flow, in a positive feedback loop.

Go PIRATE PARTY!

Re:Copyright is copyright

[westlake]

The challenge, while difficult to overcome at first may potentially lead to Google winning the case and setting a precedent whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain or at least break ground for fair use

"Fair Use" in the American context usually means very limited quotation. Reviews. Citations.
It may apply to slightly extended usage rights within the home.

It does not mean that a commercial entity like Google can sweep up everything in sight for free and take it into the public domain.
For its own profit.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[jbourj]

Google has done the right thing so far: if a news agency tells Google their stuff is off limits, then Google should comply (without a court order being necessary). Google argues that they increase traffic to news agency's websites; if this is the case, then a few weeks of blocking Google's access to Belgian news should make them come pleading for forgiveness.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[jbourj]

Wait a minute! Can't any news website simply block Google's crawling via robots.txt?

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

This is fair use in the US. But the US has one of the most liberal 'fair use' laws in the world. Technically, fair use only applies to US copyright law. Other countries have similar concepts like fair dealing, but almost every one of them is significantly more restrictive.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[humble.fool]

You mean everything on the internet isn't already free?

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

But the fact that Google copies, changes, reassembles, etc. copyrighted information without anyone's consent should be challenged.

That's not what happened according to TFA, which makes a pretty clear case for fair use.

In any case, fuck the Belgian court system for its arrogance in forcing Google to display its hokey ruling. That's like forcing a blowjob on someone, then telling them, as you're about to come, that they WILL swallow, not spit.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever here of robots.txt? They don't have to tell Google a damn thing, because Google honors webtradition. Too bad the newspapers are trying to dazzle the public/court with BS instead of getting a clue and just delisting themselves.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Mr2cents]

They show the first paragraph and a link to the article. That's just like the context google shows when you search for a term. Now about the court order, there was only one party at the hearing, google never got an invitation. This is one of those fast procedures, and being a belgian myself, I truely believe our courts are perfectly capable of messing up like this. This is not the last of it; google will want to defend itself.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not mean that a commercial entity like Google can sweep up everything in sight for free and take it into the public domain.
For its own profit.

Good thing they don't do that, or we'd have to punish them in the U.S.

Apparently, Belgium believes in preventive discipline.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[CaVi]

Yes, same case, next step.

The 1million/day was if they didn't remove content from Google News. The 500k/day was for the case where they didn't print the judgment on their front page.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[GeffDE]

This is not in any way an issue for the corporations to fight out because the corporations in this case are the "content providers" (read: restrictors) who will bend you over and fuck you blind if you leave them to their own devices. As a consequence of the "free" world embracing capitalism, nothing is free anymore. Companies, and by induction, corporations, are required by law (called Feduciary Responsibility) to make as much money as possible. It is the reason that one of the basic tenets of copyright, to spread ideas (not restrict or manage) has been so violated everywhere; it is also the reason that we don't have cars that reach 50 mpg or that something called "designed obsolesence" was invented.

I agree, governments should be public servants, and that is why they need to rule, legislate and enforce a new copyright system that serves the public by preventing the IP outrages like this that occur all the time.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[O'Laochdha]

This is a concept of common law, however, and an intentional loophole in the treaty; individual nations don't have to allow for "fair use." Apparently, Belgium doesn't.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[falsified]

That is the most accurate analogy I have ever heard.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Google does have consent. People consent to their content being viewed, copied, reassembled, etc whatever the moment they choose to publish it on the Internet. No precedent is needed. You wanna improve fair use? Get the courts to declare, as they should under basic Constitutional analysis, the DMCA. That is, get the courts to stop taking kickbacks, by way of the politicians who appoint them, from the MPAA and friends.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it's for profit doesn't mean that it is not fair use. US fair use is more extensive that you have listed. To quote the fair use law:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

              1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
              2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
              3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
              4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

Under US law google would have met the news reporting and research statements of the first paragraph and would have had an excellent argument for numbers 2, 3, and 4. It would be extremely unlikely that google would have lost in the US courts. But not all countries, as you mentioned, have the same definition of fair use.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[iminplaya]

Content, in these cases, is entertainment. We don't need it. We are simply addicted to it. We bend over very willingly to get it, just like any other addict. We will rob and steal, and even kill for it. But we don't need it. Just look at that silly stuff about the Sony console and their dopey "hi-def"(or whatever HD means there) cars. They get away with it because we suck it up. That's how much we are willing to do whatever it takes for diversion. As far as I'm concerned, they can keep it. And I honestly don't give a damn if the whole internet gets turned off. They know where they can stuff their content. The guys up on stage at the local bar provide plenty for me. The whole compter thing is a convenient, easy source of income, but if it all goes away tomorrow, well, then, I guess it's back to turning wrenches. The rest of you all seem to be stuck in some kind of bear trap by all this pissing and moaning I hear about copyright. I took it all serious for a while myself, but I'm over it. You still might hear me bitch about it sometimes, but in reality, I don't give a damn. Just like with taxes, I adjust. Raise the tax, I raise my rates. I can live without Sony, and Britney. Copyright is a corporate issue. All the real money goes to the lawyers. The only thing I really fear now is that the things we allow people to do physically to each other now, you(editorial) will let them do to me. We are totally unprotected. That is scary. Dave Letterman once said, just think of the worst thing possible one human can do to another, and then realize that somewhere, somebody is doing that and much worse. Think about that for a while, and all the energy wasted arguing about copyright is quite trivial, and really is nothing more than a distraction. Ignore it, feel free to build on the works of others, and we might climb out of the stone age for real.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Belgium and I'm hearing it just now. I'm kind of disgusted.. Belgium is so burocratic.. having so many parliaments, so many ministers.. doing mostly the same thing.. using the taxes I pay for stupidities like the case against google, when there are much more important things to fix in this country. Small children die because of wrong action of the doctors, when they build a new building, there is mud on 1km radius aroung the place.. nobody complaints.. but when it's google.. well suit them. I'm really disapointed and please excuse the stupidity of those that file the complaint against google.. they don't represent the majority of the people in this country.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[bky1701]

Ignore it, feel free to build on the works of others, and we might climb out of the stone age for real.

Real easy to say, until you get sued and have all your hopes taken from you for doing so. Maybe I am a heartless bastard for it, but I don't *CARE* what could be happening to someone else that maybe the "worst possible thing". News flash: people always have and always will do nasty things to each other. I know copyright affects me and many others negatively. It IS an issue, no matter how much you call it a "corporate issue". It stops being a "corporate issue" when it causes me direct problems, and become MY problem. So you may no longer care, and maybe as happy as a pig in mud, but I cannot close my eyes and yell "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA I DON'T HEAR YOU". The end result is, even if it doesn't hurt you now, if you let it, it sure as hell is going to.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, and that would be terrible, wouldnt' it?

Re:Copyright is copyright

[valen]

  Most countries don't have a fair use clause in their national copyright laws. Belgium is one of them.

John

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

The challenge, while difficult to overcome at first may potentially lead to Google winning the case and setting a precedent whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain or at least break ground for fair use.

Better yet, after kowtowing to China on the censorship issue, and now this Belgian debacle, maybe Google should just take over the folding@home project. They seem to have mastered all the basic techniques of folding.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Mateo_LeFou]

Overblown copyright is obviously not as intense a problem as torture, but I think it's reductive to say it boils down to entertainment. Its intent, as some of us never get tired of pointing out, is to promote science and the useful arts -- not to divert us. I would go so far as to suggest that art as mere diversion results from the industrialization of "content". That's a different story, though.

Allow the public domain to be enriched again, and you will see innovations and dsicoveries that make human life better and more fair. It's a perfectly noble project

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, Belgium doesn't.

Well then, fuck Belgium

Re:Copyright is copyright

[alienw]

We have cars that reach 60-70mpg. They are called diesels. And they are not on the market only because consumers are too stupid to buy them.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Could you rephrase that? I'm not sure how one challenges facts.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[iminplaya]

We can put an end to copyright the moment we quit buying copyrighted products. We can restrict interest rates buy controlling our use of credit. All the real copyright issues going through the courts right now are amongst corporate elephants. The present cases against the consumer are to keep us blind to the fact we don't need copyright. For now the "violators" will have to stay completely underground and work anonymously. They will have to use wireless mesh, VPN, etc. to keep their communications secure. Of course this will a bit more difficult for hardware contraband, as it is becoming more clear with the present torturer in chief, and future ones, that they will use nukes to protect IP law. But IP law is the symptom, not the disease. And while we may be able to defeat it. We really need to go after the powerful people that create these kinds of things that simply exist to restrict our essential freedoms. We desperately need to remove their authority. Then things like copyright and travel restrictions will whither and die, as they should.

...but I don't *CARE* what could be happening to someone else that maybe the "worst possible thing". News flash: people always have and always will do nasty things to each other.

Yes, that's true of course. But your tax dollars are hard at work paying for those nasty things. For the first time that I am aware of, there is an American President who openly wants the authority to kidnap and torture people. That's something you shouldn't ignore. They can't exist without our support. Try to minimize it any way you can.

Re:Copyright is copyright

[iminplaya]

Its intent, as some of us never get tired of pointing out, is to promote science and the useful arts...

That's its (over)stated intent. It's not in any way its true intent. Its intent at the time was to reduce the publuc's access to a printing press. And reduce the volume of criticism against government and corporate authorities. It gives our great industrialists the ability to mete out human progess with each successive model year, or with "new and improved", "whiter than white". It's why superior computer chips(Alpha...imagine the mac with a few of those) are under IP lockdown, while we are left with the crumbs(Intel). It's why we fly in kerosene burning jalopies instead of something as safe as an elevator where you just push a button to select your destination. There is no way of knowing how badly it has slowed us down. It could be anywhere from 50 years to 5,000 years, or more. But make no mistake, it is nothing more than just another tool used by the authorities to maintain their power with something a bit more appealing than bombs and bullets.

And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop

[rolfwind]

in webtraffic.

Good for them.

Will they sue Yahoo/MSN next?

Re:And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

You bet they'll see a drop in traffic, try googling for site http://www.lesoir.be/ on google.be, or news.google.be. You don't just get the ruling, you get a message that thousands of results have been deleted. Dutch-language papers, such as http://www.hln.be/ are still available and in the cache.

If you do the right search in Google, you'll turn up the following message:

In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1260 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.

and the following link and comparison

Re:And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop

[Anonymous Coward]

I am waiting for them to sue, one month from now, Google for not including them in their search results.

Btw, when you publish something on the web, you give your consent to that content being cached, used, misused, etc on the millions of computers making up the internet. You don't get to opt-out of that once you opt-in.

Re:And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop

[Web Goddess]

For some reason, that number is down to 9 (http://www.lesoir.be) or 3 (lesoir.be), and there are apparently no omitted results if you search using google.com instead of google.be ... which I find odd.

Re:And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop

[BBird]

clueless judges and greedy newspapers. if they don't understand the way the www works they better revert to print only.

you can read it here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.be/

but Google arn't bitter

Re:you can read it here

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no we can't. It appears to be written in some crazy moon language.

Re:you can read it here

[ichigo 2.0]

You could try pressing the 'English' link on the page...

Re:you can read it here

[ichigo 2.0]

It doesn't help much though, as the english translation is incomprehensible legalese:

francophone et germanophone représentés par la demanderesse à dater de la signification de l'ordonnance, sous peine d'astreinte de 2.000.000,- par jour de retard;

Those wacky Americans lawyers and their lawyerspeak, only thing I understood was 'retard' and 2 million, maybe it has something to do with the amount of stupid sites on the internet.

I don't get it

[mikesd81]

I still fail to see how it is a copyright infringement to link to news articles? It's not like Google is hosting the article on it's own website...it's linking. It's a shame that companies are so money hungry that they want to be paid for someone directing traffic to their site. Next business will want money from taxi drivers for delivering customers.

Re:I don't get it

[Scrameustache]

I still fail to see how it is a copyright infringement to link to news articles? It's not like Google is hosting the article on it's own website.

According to the ruling I'm reading right now on google.be, I can sum up your misunderstanding in two words: Google cache.

Re:I don't get it

[Mateo_LeFou]

"It's not like Google is hosting the article on it's own website"

Actually, an earlier article explained it is exactly like that, for certain older stories no longer on the original publishers' sites.

(This does not make the thing less stupid, though)

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright infringement is just the foil. Suing big US corps like Microsoft, Google etc. - for huge "fines" is part of the EU's raison d'être. And they complain about US commercialism!

Re:I don't get it

[mikesd81]

I never followed the stories enough to ever consider Google Cache.

Re:I don't get it

[kdemetter]

i don't like this . I used google cache numerous times because our ministers like to say someting one day , and then claim something entirely different the other day ( and in some cases the press removes the original message , i wonder why :-) ) .

So i used it to see the original message .

for the record , i'm a belgian citizen .

Re:I don't get it

[tehwebguy]

does google.be not follow robots.txt?

Re:I don't get it

[Scrameustache]

does google.be not follow robots.txt?

Hard to say, the last part of the ruling mention's the court dismay that Google refused to take part in the technical assesment portion of the trial, which is where such details would have been timely and constructive to divulge.

I think google shot itself in the foot there.

Re:I don't get it

[ronanbear]

Next business will want money from taxi drivers for delivering customers.

You mean like airports charging taxi drivers both for a license to pick up in the airport and each time they pick up as is the situation in Dublin?

Bussinesses charge based on what they think will get them the most money. The Belgian newspapers are no different. They understand the situation pretty well. It's just that there's money to be made.

For the amount of traffic google news generates they could pressure media to pay them instead ( directing more traffic to sites using adsense ads would be adequate)

Re:I don't get it

[laughingcoyote]

According to the ruling I'm reading right now on google.be, I can sum up your misunderstanding in two words: Google cache.

I can respond in one filename: robots.txt.

Re:I don't get it

[baadger]

What I don't get is why the newspaper in question didn't just throw up a robots.txt file, blocking Google's news spiders, and then ask politely for Google to remove all existing content from their indexes.

I guess they'd just rather flex some highly paid lawyer muscle and deal with the expenses of a court battle than get some web monkey sat in a broom cupboard somewhere to take 10 minutes out of their busy schedule and do this...

Re:I don't get it

[vrt3]

The problem is not with new articles; the problem is that the newspaper has a model where everybody can read new articles, but only paying subscribers can see old archived articles.

If Google stores the articles, everybody can read the old articles without paying for a subscription.

Re:I don't get it

[bram]

The fact that a "small" private company sued google for caching their content is a mistake and a proper court will rectify that.

For all non-belgians around, we do have a legal system and we do follow certain fair practice laws.
Maybe there's some corruption and lobbying as anywhere else but mostly things work out.

This might actually accelerate anti-copyright law.

Ok back to bed :)

Re:I don't get it

[houghi]

robots.txt is an opt-out. The law in Belgium requires an opt-in, not an opt-out.

Re:I don't get it

[houghi]

I can repsond in on comarison: Opt-out against opt-in.

What do you want to be the standard, or should there be two standards? One for things you can use and one for things you can't?

What if all I harvest are email-adresses, instead of copyrighted newsarticles?

Re:I don't get it

[kimvette]

Actually, if the newspaper staff themselves had ever submitted their URL to google for inclusion after Google had deployed their caching technology, Google should appeal this and countersue the paper for willful negligence, fraud, extortion, and anything else their legal team can dream up.

On top of removing and permanently banning them from the Google index.

Re:I don't get it

[laughingcoyote]

While I dislike spam as much as anyone, I really don't see how you can "outlaw" the harvesting of email addresses either. If you post your email address to a website, you really have no reasonable expectation that it is any longer "private information". I certainly don't have any expectation that the email address I use here, even given the auto-obfuscation of it, will in any way remain private. I have a -truly- private email address which I give only to friends, family, and business associates, and that one gets no spam.

Now, back to the robots.txt issue. We're not talking about Ma and Pa Kettle not knowing that the email address you use to sign up for the "daily joke" will be sold to spammers and back the world over. We're talking about a simple protocol that any semi-competent Web designer has been familiar with since the day they wrote their first HTML tag. And since the vast majority of sites -do- want to be indexed (and, yes, cached) by search engines, the logical response is that those few who don't should opt-out. Google provides an easy, well-documented, widely known mechanism to do so. That should be the extent of their responsibility.

Re:I don't get it

[hublan]

robots.txt is an opt-out. The law in Belgium requires an opt-in, not an opt-out.

So you mean basically, if there is no robots.txt file, then don't index belgian sites at all? Sounds like a reasonable compromise to me.

Heck, do that for all websites, maybe we'll see a brief drop in linkfarms. Well, until they catch on...

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I am confused as to your understanding of this issue. Google news does not cache. It never has and probably never will. So your two word summation does little to elucidate why the Belgian court is in a tizzy.

Re:I don't get it

[houghi]

That optyion is an opt-out, not an opt-in as it should be.
The majority of websites that DO want to be indexed can then add their robots.txt

The default should be opt-in.

Re:I don't get it

[Pastis]

I don't mind them harvesting my email address. They can do whatever they want to do with my address. They can read it, color it, print it, place it in a big database... It's public information, you're right.

I just don't want them to send me mails I did not ask for.

Re:I don't get it

[manastungare]

You opted in when you put your content on the world wide web.

Re:I don't get it

[Maxo-Texas]

Don't let it worry you. We've always been at war with East Eurasia.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

robots.txt is can't be seen solely as an opt-out : If you create the robots.txt before putting your website online, then Google will read your robots.txt before referencing your website.

Re:I don't get it

[wboelen]

I can respond in one quote:

robots.txt is an opt-out. The law in Belgium requires an opt-in, not an opt-out.

-- houghi

Re:I don't get it

[laughingcoyote]

Ah, I can see that you do not program. Or I hope you don't!

When setting something up, the defaults should be whatever the majority will use. That's the difference here. In the case of spam, the majority does not want it, so the default should be no until you explicitly sign up for a list. On the other hand, most websites do want to be indexed and cached, so the default should be you are until you explicitly say no thanks. It's no different then anything useful. Most people will want the "find" command to operate on directories recursively, so it does by default. If you don't want it to (or want to limit how far it goes) the options are there to do that. On the other hand, most people will probably -not- intend to use the "rm" command recursively, and in fact could get in pretty hot water if it does! So by default it does not, but there's an option to change that behavior too, if you'd like.

What in the world is wrong with designing for the majority while respecting the rights and wishes of the minority? The fact that a few might be too lazy or stupid to even -ask-? If their web designer isn't competent to set up a robots.txt, do they really think people can't crack in there at will anyway? We're not talking about a highly technical, time-consuming thing to set up here, we're talking about:
"User-agent: Googlebot
Deny:/"
And they've got all the "goodness" of Google leaving them completely alone. I sure hope they enjoy that!

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that in the ideal case, the defaults should be whatever the majority will use.

So the solution for the web is simple: make sure that all web servers install a robots.txt file by default, allowing the whole site to be indexed. This would require the addition of an explicit "Allow" directive in robots.txt (currently the specification only knows about "Disallow"). This is the only good way to implement opt-in. Similarly, all HTML template engines should add the META tag ROBOTS with the values "INDEX, FOLLOW" by default. The legacy web servers that do not have a robots.txt file will not be indexed until they are upgraded to a newer version that installs a robots.txt file. That's how it should be.

Re:I don't get it

[Alchemar]

When you go to a web site it downloads the information from their server and places a copy on your computer that your browser then displays. If you want to go with an opt-in method for copyrighted material on the internet (every web pages is copyrighted unless intentionally released to the public domain) you need to write to the web master and get permission (most countries require copyright privlages to be in writing) to download his/her site. If it is in the public domain you might as well write them and ask them anyway, because the notice is probably on their website. Opt-in works for a lot of things, web pages is not one of them. Yes, it is the law, but it is a nonfuctioning law, and needs to be changed. This is probably the only law that doesn't work when you add "on the internet"

I'd take my ball and go home.

[JakiChan]

But I'm petty like that. I mean how much ad revenue can Belgium possibly add to their bottom line? Kill Google.be and news.google.be, block all known IP ranges from Belgium and throw them to a redirect that says "No google for you!"

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Dahamma]

Damn, you beat me to it! That's what I was thinking, too.

Risking $500k a day in fines from a country with 10 million residents? No WAY it's remotely worth it, they couldn't make 1/10 of that from Belgian operations. Shutting down google.be would be fairly harsh to the Belgian citizens who probably couldn't care less about the ruling, but hey, they'd care after that.

Actually, let's do some calculations for fun...

Google had gross revenue of $6B last year. That's $1 per person on the planet per YEAR (obviously not everyone on the planet uses Google but this will work for a rough estimate). Say Belgium would then be responsible for $10M a year. That's under $30k a day. Assume Belgians are avid Google users and round it up to $50k per day, and hey, my 1/10 estimate above wasn't too bad...

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

that would not be a bad thing to do, perhaps more of my less tech savvy countrymen will notice something is terribly wrong with our current administration involving internet and copyright issues.
so yes google please block belgium from any of your services and make the competition do the same until the next national elections.

ow my government made a tax hickup public a few weeks ago they charged 4 companies +-800M to much and now they need money to cover that hole, 2 days would fix that nicely

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[mr.cbaker]

I agree. screw them. Let's see how the people feel if they dont have Google. You can bet your ass there would be some civil unrest.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[HatchedEggs]

I have to laugh about this. The parent in this thread received a +0 for troll, and the response just after it that started off by saying that they agreed with it was marked as a +3 inciteful.

Get it together mods, you guys usually do a horrible job, but now you're just out doing yourselves.

I'll refrain from saying anything more obvious than that.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, punish the normal people as wel, good thinking there.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[gutnor]

"Risking $500k a day in fines from a country with 10 million residents? No WAY it's remotely worth it"

This is a fine IF google does NOT follow the court judgement. A fine must be high enough so that Google cannot disregard the court decision.

Now they can shutdown Google.be, sure, but what will be the WORLD public opinion if they decide to shutdown Belgium because they don't like the court order (that affect only the content of the news aggregator) while at the same time they filter everything for the chinese government ?

"Google had gross revenue of $6B last year. That's $1 per person on the planet per YEAR" ... "Belgium would then be responsible for $10M a year."

And Google makes less than $1B in USA, Japan and Europe all together. Much less than in China alone.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[guruevi]

You must be an American. If you didn't know, Belgium is THE economic hub for Europe. Not only do all roadways, waterways, railways meet there, also quite some important political and economical centers and buildings are located there (The European Union itself is in Brussels). The other problem is that Belgium itself doesn't have that of a great information structure. If you're in Belgium, your internet connection feed into the backbones is most likely located in Amsterdam (so you will effectively kill the Netherlands and Google's datacenter there too) but there is also an international backbone connection in Antwerp (feeding parts of Germany and the Netherlands too) and in Brussels/Zaventem (for Belgium, the American Embassy and the airport businesses) and sometimes our backbone feeds are even across the Atlantic ocean somewhere in New York.

So if you want to have Google disconnect 30% of Europe and 5% of the USA next to the bad publicity just because some stupid Wallonian newspapers
can't get their sh-t together, feel free. BTW: Wallonia != Belgium. The (smarter) Flemish part of Belgium including Brussels has the higher penetration of internet, businesses and people. The Wallonians are like the Southerners and those in power, GWB here in the States.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'd say "Inciteful" and "troll" are more or less synonymous. It looks like it's marked "Insightful" now, though.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[JakiChan]

You don't get it. All they have to do is not be a business entity in Belgium. Then they can't be sued there.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Infernal Device]

If you didn't know, Belgium is THE economic hub for Europe.

And apparently, it's THE stupidity hub as well.

The (smarter) Flemish part of Belgium including Brussels has the higher penetration of internet, businesses and people.

It's all looks like Belgium from the outside, bub.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[HatchedEggs]

You really brought your A game...

Somebody make this chap a moderator or something.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[rohan972]

but hey, they'd care after that.

Why, wont they can just search google.com instead of google.be?

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[WilliamSChips]

But Belgium doesn't exist!

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[frost22]

pfft. economic hub - what nonsense. I am European, and let me tell you this - Belgium is a piece of dirt on a map, an asylum of megalomaniac province idiots, and basically known in Europe for pralinees, corruption and pedophilia.

A few years ago the Belgian idiots tried to declare the world to be their colony by making lawas applying to the whole world - and trying to enforce them. Needless to mention that shit backfired ... a little :-)
Some years before that Belgioum shocked the rest of Europe by finding a pedophile ring - abducting and murdering little girls - that was so imbued and anchored in high circles of Belgian societey that Belgian police for years tried to fully uncover it, ultimately unsuccessfully (a few small fish went to prison). Apparently, pedohiles in belgium are about as powerful and entrenched as the mafia in southern Italy.
Aside of those Brussels is the main seat of the European Comission and an incredible fertile ground for absurd levels of corruption.

But one has to remark that Belgian pralinees are excellent.

If I were Google, I would just remove any reference to the newspapers that sued from all Google systems. All of them.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

The (smarter) Flemish part of Belgium including Brussels(...)

Sir, you are a fascist. (Some population born smarter than the other?) and seem to like the ideas of the Vlaams Belang (despite their dreams, Brussels is not flemish and speak french). Plus you're stupid, as Le Soir is in Brussels!

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago the Belgian idiots tried to declare the world to be their colony by making lawas applying to the whole world - and trying to enforce them. Needless to mention that shit backfired ... a little :-)

So you think every leaders can do what they want in their own countries?
I think it's one of the good law voted in Belgium, but you obviously don't understand it at all. Google for it. ;)

Some years before that Belgioum shocked the rest of Europe by finding a pedophile ring - abducting and murdering little girls - that was so imbued and anchored in high circles of Belgian societey that Belgian police for years tried to fully uncover it, ultimately unsuccessfully (a few small fish went to prison). Apparently, pedohiles in belgium are about as powerful and entrenched as the mafia in southern Italy.

Good ol' conspiracy theory. Woohoo!
No ring. Nothing. Just human horror at its best. And if I follow you: Americans are all serial killers, Arabs are terrorists, Italians and Germans are fascists, etc.
FUD and bullshit!

Aside of those Brussels is the main seat of the European Comission and an incredible fertile ground for absurd levels of corruption.

And of course, all politicians are corrupted!
Go vote for your local fascist party and try to save the world! Moron.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

If there was only one belgian with mod points to put a "Flamebait" on this post ...

"The (smarter) Flemish part of Belgium including Brussels" : well, you mean that 80% of french-speaking people living in brussels are now flemish ?

"he Wallonians are like the Southerners and those in power, GWB here in the States." : let's see where will the far right "muslims are bad" party get the most votes in the next elections,

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago the Belgian idiots tried to declare the world to be their colony by making lawas applying to the whole world - and trying to enforce them. Needless to mention that shit backfired ... a little :-)

This was actually just an implementation of some international agreement (unfortunately I've long forgotten which agreement that was). It was curious, though, how other countries that signed it, opted to pretend the agreement didn't exist.

Some years before that Belgioum shocked the rest of Europe by finding a pedophile ring - abducting and murdering little girls - that was so imbued and anchored in high circles of Belgian societey that Belgian police for years tried to fully uncover it, ultimately unsuccessfully (a few small fish went to prison). Apparently, pedohiles in belgium are about as powerful and entrenched as the mafia in southern Italy.

Yeah. The BBC did a documentary on that once. Too bad it proved to be all false. It was just a crazy conspiracy theory. The Dutroux affaire changed the political landscape though (although, possible oddly to a foreigner, more on the Flemish side than on the Wallonian side of the country).

Aside of those Brussels is the main seat of the European Comission and an incredible fertile ground for absurd levels of corruption.

Take responsibility for the corruption of the politicians your country sends to Brussels, will you?

If I were Google, I would just remove any reference to the newspapers that sued from all Google systems. All of them.

Ah, yes, because 1984 doesn't apply when it's companies that 'update' the truth.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google had gross revenue of $6B last year. That's $1 per person on the planet per YEAR (obviously not everyone on the planet uses Google but this will work for a rough estimate).

I'm not so sure about that. Statistical figures show that in the countries with the most PCs per person, there is about half a PC per person. Considering that in those countries there are persons with more than one PC, and it being unclear how the counts are made (i.e. if they are about PCs ever sold or if there has been some poll to find the number still actually in use), I think it is more accurate to assume that in those countries one out of 3 persons has a PC.

But those are countries like Belgium. Resources on this planet are not that evenly distributed. There are enough places where people have no chance at all to own a PC, let alone use Google.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

30% of people in brussels speak flemish
20% has it as native language

you often hear the (totally wrong) number of 10% flemish, which is the number of flemish speaking brusselians that have BOTH parents speaking dutch as first language. The following (among others) people are not included in that 10% number
- If one of your parents has french as language
- if both your parents speak french (a lot of the 30 years people were sent tot flemish schools and are perfectly bilingual, often more flemish culture than in the walloon culture)
- if at least one of the parents speak portuguese, arabian, english,... (1/3 is of brusselsians have foreign origin)

Counted in the same way, 47% percent is wallonian and 43% of the people in brussels are mute :-)

But since 95% in brussels understand french, and only 30% understand dutch, its often easier to just speak french.

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is logic, because "Vlaams Belang" wants formal independence of Flanders. And because the "economy" of Wallonia is depending of Flemish funds, they are the last persons in Belgium who wants to be seperated.

Name a cat a cat... And Brussels is Flemisch territory (check the map, the "language frontier" is located below brussels.)

Re:I'd take my ball and go home.

[Anonymous Coward]

actually Brussels is Brussels' territory, not flemish or wallonian.

But it has always been a flemish city, only since beginning 20th century have there been more french speaking than flemish speaking people there.
now there are +/- 20% flemish, 80% french speaking. 1/3 can speak flemish fluently , 95% can speak french fluently.

greetings from a flemish brusselian.

Minitruth

[gsfprez]

apparently, in Europe, the Ministry of Truth is working well - making sure that old news doesn't rear it ugly head to compete with the news of today.

Re:Minitruth

[Anonymous Coward]

Minitrue, actually, not minitruth.

Re:Minitruth

[Venerable Vegetable]

Silly book reference..

1) Europe is not one country.
2) It's not the Belgian government who is hiding old news, it's the newspapers. It's just their business plan.
3) If you subscribe (pay) you can read the archives. If you pay a little more you even get daily paper copies which you can keep forever in your own house.
4) At libraries, you can read news archives, often for free.

5) Google didn't even try to defend itself. The newspapers pretty much won by default.

The court order is meaningless

[Rude Turnip]

I went over to www.google.be. No one will know what's going on--the whole thing is written in Belgian. Brilliant, Google!

Re:The court order is meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

I went over to www.google.be. No one will know what's going on--the whole thing is written in Belgian. Brilliant, Google!

Go ahead, say something in Belgian ;-)
Hint: Belgium has three official languages, Dutch, French and German.

As an aside, maybe it hasn't crossed your mind yet, but www.google.be is mostly visited by Belgians, who do speak "Belgian".

Re:The court order is meaningless

[polar red]

It's in French, except for the first line, that's dutch. (belgium : 35% french, 60% dutch, 1%german-speaking)

Re:The court order is meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to recognise sarcasm

Re:The court order is meaningless

[hey]

Your post seems to be in American.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[no_space_in_time]

Isn't that Vlaams?

Re:The court order is meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there are language links on the google.be page and you can see the ruling in french, english, and so forth.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[ichigo 2.0]

Yeah, but it's still gibberish to me. I'm not good at legalese.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[Tripkipke]

A Belgian is an inhabitant of Belgium, how the hell did you manage to read him? In Belgium, where the belgians live, they speak a dutch dialect (flemish) or french. The whole thing is written in french. Brilliant, dude!

Re:The court order is meaningless

[truedfx]

Flemish/Vlaams is a dialect of Dutch.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

a) the name of this mysterious language is 'French'. French is the second most commonly-taught second language in the world (after English).

b) This message is meant mostly for Belgians, who DO understand what's written there...

c) They just published the court order itself, which is boring as hell and will not be read by anyone anyway, no matter in which language it would be published.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[AxminsterLeuven]

Be carefull saying that in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium)!
Although the official language in Flanders is Dutch, which is spoken both in Flanders and the Netherlands, both regions have distinct linguistic standards. Grammar and vocabulary are +99% the same; the main differences are phonetic.
A dialect is a kind of subclass of a main language. That's not the case here. Also, the geographic area in which a particular dialect is spoken, is generally a lot smaller: most Flemish towns and villages have very distinct dialects, which are all subclasses of the Flemish/Dutch language.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[truedfx]

Be carefull saying that in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium)! Although the official language in Flanders is Dutch, which is spoken both in Flanders and the Netherlands, both regions have distinct linguistic standards. Grammar and vocabulary are +99% the same;

The grammar may be (nearly?) identical, but the vocabulary has enough differences to cause serious misunderstandings.

the main differences are phonetic.
A dialect is a kind of subclass of a main language. That's not the case here.

I think there may be some confusion. I did not mean that Flemish is a dialect of the language spoken in the Netherlands, but only what I said, which is that it is a dialect of the Dutch language. Do you still have a problem with my claim?

Also, the geographic area in which a particular dialect is spoken, is generally a lot smaller: most Flemish towns and villages have very distinct dialects, which are all subclasses of the Flemish/Dutch language.

That's the same (although possibly to a lesser extent) in the Netherlands, and not really relevant. A city can have a dialect even if the province or country it is in has a dialect itself.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[goarilla]

1 line of dutch and the rest is in french :(

Re:The court order is meaningless

[AxminsterLeuven]

Do you still have a problem with my claim?

Hey, I never had a problem with your claim! We're all Microsoft-hatin', Google-lovin', Linux-humpin' friends here, right?

A city can have a dialect even if the province or country it is in has a dialect itself.

Technically, the latter is called a regiolect. But that's splitting hairs, I know.
There are also ideolects, which are linguistics distinctions on the level of the individual. Hope my professors are proud of me for remembering.

Re:The court order is meaningless

[truedfx]

Hey, I never had a problem with your claim! We're all Microsoft-hatin', Google-lovin', Linux-humpin' friends here, right?

I guess one out of three isn't bad. :)

Technically, the latter is called a regiolect. But that's splitting hairs, I know. There are also ideolects, which are linguistics distinctions on the level of the individual. Hope my professors are proud of me for remembering.

Interesting. I've never heard of those distinctions, and if they had come up, I would have remembered. But as long as it's clear what you meant by dialect, and what I meant by it, that should be good enough.

Incompetence at work

[Aminion]

Any competent web developer should know how to use the The Robots Exclusion Protocol to prevent crawlers from crawling/indexing a web site. Why News Sites do not want to be visited by Google is really beyond me - it is free advertising! Visitors still have to visit the news sites if they want to read anything but a short article summary.

Re:Incompetence at work

[sammck]

The news sites want to be crawled and indexed by Google, and show up in their search results. They just want to control the user experience for what articles are visible, what advertising is displayed, etc. Google news takes that control away from them.

Re:Incompetence at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not everything is as easy as it would seem at first. "robots.txt" is opt-out, not opt-in, as has been remarked in previous posts on this matter. When concerning spam, everybody on slashdot will reject 'opt-out'. Well, I can understand that some news company might feel the same for Google News usage of their content. Sure, this time, they could reject them. Then Microsoft Live will come. They could reject it. Then thousands others, and you'll have a real problem, not being able to reject/select those that you wish, and those that you don't, and still allowing individuals to access the site.

In addition, I could imagine that if communication is as bad inside those Belgian newspapers as it is in a lot of companies, the IT wasn't aware of what the legal department did. Some of the incoherent moves made by those newspapers seem to show that (If I remember well, they had Google ads here http://www.lalibre.be/)

Also, it's been explained at least on one "official blog" of one of those newspaper (in French: http://blog.lesoir.be/blog-du-sel/?p=14#comment-15 ), that at first Google didn't want to negotiate with them, at all, before being sued. Well, now, they took notice.

Being the mega-corp that it became, I could imagine that Google wanted to ignore a small country. Nobody like arrongants people, and the nice "do no evil" Google seems from day to day to turn slowly into a arrogant mega-corp. I suppose that's a consequence of being on the stock exchange, and having to justify yourself to stock holders.

Re:Incompetence at work

[RonnyJ]

However, if a site doesn't have a robots.txt file, should search engines just presume that the site has given permission for the page to be cached?

As a web user, I prefer it like that, but I can understand the point of view that permission should be actually granted, not just assumed (i.e. have a Robots *Inclusion* Protocol instead).

Re:Incompetence at work

[bigpat]

As a web user, I prefer it like that, but I can understand the point of view that permission should be actually granted, not just assumed

It comes down to fair use, not permission. If the copying is done as a fair use, then there is no assumption of permission and honoring a robots.txt is just a courtesy not some legal requirement.

world+dog

[Anonymous Coward]

world+dog I don't know why, but that feels like a great name for something.

The realization will set in...

[NexFlamma]

... that by banning Google from reprinting their stories, they have shot themselves in the revenue-hungry foot. Without Google serving up ads for them or redirects to their pages that contain ads, I predict a massive drop in their internet based income. It could very well be enough to kill the already fragile print media (or at least that one outlet).

Eventually news corporations will realize that they need Google a hell of a lot more than Google needs them.

(It's kind of scary that Google has become so powerful that they can order news corporations around, but I'd rather it be them in power than the news co's.)

Re:The realization will set in...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt the "internet based income" for those newspaper is very high. Paper editions are still the main income (and commercials, of course)

Re:The realization will set in...

[NexFlamma]

Sure, maybe for the moment, but I think you'd be surprised as to how rapidly their subscription fees are dwindling. Who needs a newspaper when you can get all of your news faster and cheaper with Google?

The loss of their ability to be the only news source is why they are suing Google in the first place. If they didn't fear Google's strength in the market of luring subscriber's away, they wouldn't be suing, would they?

Re:The realization will set in...

[CaVi]

Well, it's not one newspaper suing Google, its the association of French-speaking newspapers of Belgium. If Google News doesn't index any of them anymore, news.google.be will rapidly become irrelevant for French-speaking belgian people. Those will just go to other search engines (Yahoo, MS Live,...) At least one of them will make an agreement with those newspapers, and that one search engine/news aggregator will become the reference in Belgium.

So, if Google doesn't want then Belgian market, they can drop it. But they'll face the prospect of having another engine become strong in this (tiny) market. If Google made news.google.BE in the first place, it's that they didn't want to exclude themselves from this market.

Other European countries are following the current matters with great interest, and might take the same path in a near future. Could Google ignore the whole of Europe? And whose going to be next?

Re:The realization will set in...

[nielsbg]

That may be so and illustrates the issue in my opinion, what started as a company that stood for the 'right' thing has evolved in being no better morally than the other inet moguls. No suprise here and/or 'welcome to the real world' but I do find it appalling the 'Company' is still claiming it makes the difference, tell tale sign in my view is that nowadays they need/use a campaign for this along with the bizz crap all other companies use to justify plain immoral actions like the one around China. The fact Google now knows they ARE needed is not so much an achievement; its the logical result of being innovative -now that WAS a real achievement-; using their position in this way confirms Google is now just a company like ms and should be regarded so.

Re:The realization will set in...

[westlake]

by banning Google from reprinting their stories, they have shot themselves in the revenue-hungry foot. Without Google serving up ads for them or redirects to their pages that contain ads, I predict a massive drop in their Internet based income.

I know it is heresy to say this on Slashdot, but there are other search engines than Google.

Belgians will move to the one that serves them best. Unlike the Geek, they aren't bound to make the the pilgrimage to Mountain View.

Re:The realization will set in...

[JasonTik]

(It's kind of scary that Google has become so powerful that they can order news corporations around, but I'd rather it be them in power than the news co's.)

So far. Maybe in a few decades, you will wish ten thousand news companies were battling it out instead of Google reigning supreme. You never know what the future will hold. The best of men have given in to temptation. Don't be so sure Google won't.

Re:The realization will set in...

[BlueYoshi]

Well, it's not one newspaper suing Google, its the association of French-speaking newspapers of Belgium. If Google News doesn't index any of them anymore, news.google.be will rapidly become irrelevant for French-speaking belgian people. Those will just go to other search engines (Yahoo, MS Live,...) At least one of them will make an agreement with those newspapers, and that one search engine/news aggregator will become the reference in Belgium.

Or using french or swiss newspapers. personally I prefer lemonde.fr, liberation.fr , lefigaro.fr, letemps.ch than the belgian newspaper

China

[Krommenaas]

If only Google would have made an equally strong stand when China ordered it to apply political censorship.

Re:China

[MichaelSmith]

china > belgium

bring it on

[Anonymous Coward]

i've seen to many patents/copyright lawsuits, i'm all for breaking copyright/patents.. monkeys and their damn text with mumble jumble.. who cares.. i will not obey your patents and copieright i wil continue to disobey until you lie in your own shit, with all your lawsuit documents and your patents stuff up your ass, it means absolutely nothing. screw the law.

Re:bring it on

[gardyloo]

i've seen to many patents/copyright lawsuits, i'm all for breaking copyright/patents.. monkeys and their damn text with mumble jumble.. who cares.. i will not obey your patents and copieright i wil continue to disobey until you lie in your own shit, with all your lawsuit documents and your patents stuff up your ass, it means absolutely nothing. screw the law.

      Yargghh! And screw grammar and spelling! It's just keepin' the man down.

Re:bring it on

[bky1701]

Isn't the man the one we want to bring down? ;)

With $500K a day you could..

[Plutonite]

A) Feed a lot of children in Africa
B) Donate to cancer research
C) Buy me a new graphics card ..among other things. As others have said, the Belgian French-Speaking press need to be taught a lesson in humility, and perhaps another concerning the workings of the Tubes.

If only we had more New Yorkers on the Google high board.

Re:With $500K a day you could..

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google would still have $140,900 to put towards other uses too!

Missing the Point

[Pinky3]

The issue isn't about linking or copyright or caching. Google lost the case. They removed the offending content.

The issue was whether the judge could require Google to publish his opinion on the front page of Google.

Question 1) If the NY Times lost a case, could a judge order them to use the whole front page to publish her opinion?

Question 2) if you lost a case, could a judge order you to buy the front page of the LA Times to publish his opinion?

Perhaps this is some Belgian thing, where a judge can require losing defendants to publish the judge's opinion on the front page of a national paper.

To our Belgian friends: is this a common practice?

Al

Re:Missing the Point

[Meltir]

IANAL, but ive seen these kind of messages in newspapers here in Poland, so i guess its legal over here. Nobody is required to make the first page though - just an annoucment on any page of a big newspaper (that will reach alot of people) will do.

Re:Missing the Point

[Anonymous Coward]

To our Belgian friends: is this a common practice?

Yes

Re:Missing the Point

[CaVi]

In short: yes.

Maybe not the front page, but when big companies lose a trial, they are routinely ordered to publish the judgement in a few major newspapers. IMHO it seems to be the best way to let the public know. Of course, it's only done for cases where the public, or a high number of shareholders, was directly affected.

If a newspaper prints an incorrect information about somebody, get sued for it, and loose, the newspaper is also often required to print a correction.

Re:Missing the Point

[gerbouille]

It's common in Belgium and in France (maybe it's a Civil Law thing?). For "press crimes" like slander and libel, the publication of the verdict is usually required, sometimes in several newspapers.

Re:Missing the Point

[Barryke]

When found guilty of slander, lies or demonization by (any) press:
It is often required to locate as much publicity to a recertification, as the original (offending) publication had.

Same goes for The Netherlands.

Translation of the judgement in english

[HalliS]

This is the official translation to english (low quality pdf), sent to me by a belgian teacher of mine. Don't know if it's available elsewhere ...

If the ads are cached too, where's the loss?

[Jim Logajan]

Sidestepping the copyright issue for the moment, if the ads on the news sites also appear in the cached material, then it is hard to see what loss there is to the news sites or their advertisers.

And if that is the case (I don't know that the above is the case, though that has been my experience reading cached Google material) then it seems likely that the load on the news servers is also reduced, which may cut their bandwidth expenses while still getting their material in front of more eyeballs.

Also, if people on the net are paying the news sites $0 (or 0) per visit or view, isn't the multiplied loss still a flat zero? If you give your copyrighted material away, how can you claim a loss when someone else does the same thing with your material?

I admit those are all pragmatic issues and perhaps not legal ones (except maybe the last one) but I guess I'm in the group of people who wonders what these sites are thinking? Looks like they'll lose the war by winning the wrong battle. It all seems like a classic case of spitting into the wind to curse the storm, in my humble opinion.

Re:If the ads are cached too, where's the loss?

[mjtaylor24601]

"if the ads on the news sites also appear in the cached material, then it is hard to see what loss there is to the news sites"

I think it all depends on your business model. If you're only getting paid for click-throughs then you might be right.

If, on the other hand, you're getting paid per ad view then a Google cache of the add could hurt your bottom line because you have no way of quantifying how many people saw the ad via the Google cache.

What sounds better to a potential advertiser?

"Last month we got twenty million hits for the page that had your ad on it."

OR

"Last month we got ten million hits for the page with your ad, but we kind of sort of think that ten million more might have viewed the cached version Google was keeping."

This of course also ignores the potential revenue a newspaper might be able to realize by selling some sort of subscription service to be able to access the archive of old editions, as some posters above have suggested might be the case here.

Belgium...

[SaidinUnleashed]

the only country in the world named after a curse word.

(Someone needed to say it)

Re:Belgium...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess how many numbers there are in the national lottery.... 42

coincidence?

what an idiotic ruling

[oohshiny]

First, Google is doing this with the web site's owner's consent: it's an Internet standard that you give or deny consent with a robots.txt file. If the Belgian web sites don't exclude Google with their robots.txt file, obviously the web site owner has given consent.

Second, for the Belgian court to force Google to publish this on their home page serves no purpose other than to humiliate Google.

I have been pretty critical of Google's attitudes towards copyright; for example, I think it's wrong that Google publishes USENET news articles from a time prior to the X-NO-ARCHIVE header. But what the Belgian court has done is an outrage: this says a lot about the competency of the Belgian court and little about Google.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[SydShamino]

First, Google is doing this with the web site's owner's consent: it's an Internet standard that you give or deny consent with a robots.txt file. If the Belgian web sites don't exclude Google with their robots.txt file, obviously the web site owner has given consent.
Belgium has a very stringent opt-in law, the kind that privacy advocates in the US dream about. Everything must be opt-in, no exceptions.

robots.txt is the internet standard, yes. It is also opt-out, because you are assumed to give consent unless you take an action.

The judge ruled correctly based on Belgian law.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[ronanbear]

I'm with Google over the issue of news.google.com but their behaviour after they lost the court case has really challenged their credibility over their "do no evil" policy.

They could have easily just complied with the court order but instead they had to make a point by petulently removing all links to the relevant newspapers and even making it hard for people to read the judgement. This is manipulating search data for political purposes to suit their own agenda. It raises doubts in my mind about how much I can trust their search engine to try and be accurate, honest and to help me find what I'm looking for.

Now they're just another group of monopolist bullies.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[mc6809e]

This is manipulating search data for political purposes to suit their own agenda. It raises doubts in my mind about how much I can trust their search engine to try and be accurate, honest and to help me find what I'm looking for.

Now they're just another group of monopolist bullies.

Bullcrap.

Google is the one being bullied here. The government has police and guns and plenty of power. They can take your shit. They can put you in jail.

Google is doing the only thing they can do to protest: they're refusing to provide a service. They're not slaves, you know.

But even then they're not really free since they've been forced to use their resources to publish this ruling. They can't really say 'no', can they?

Calling Google a bully is like calling protestors that sit down in the street bullies. When the other side has the force of law and violence on it's side, that's all a sane person can do.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[Score Whore]

Google is doing the only thing they can do to protest: they're refusing to provide a service. They're not slaves, you know.

No, they are certainly not slaves. They are infantile, petulant billionaires. They want all information to be free so they can put an advertisement on it. Well except for information about their nuevo rich founders like Eric Schmidt. And information about their own assessment of their business health, ie. industry standard guidance about their projected earnings. Or information that would prevent them from doing business in an emerging market like China. And information about technologies that they don't want anyone else to use without paying such as that restrained by Google's patent portfolio. Or information about what people search for and what links people click on, they hold that very tightly to themselves. Or information about supposed click-fraud.

Google isn't your friend. They've never been your friend. They don't care about you. They don't care about freedom. They just want money. Even Google's philanthropic arm is for profit. End of story.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[mjtaylor24601]

"Now they're just another group of monopolist bullies."

Oh yes the poor Belgium newspapers are being picked on by big bad Google.

What a load of rubbish.

These guys just finished suing Google for listing their sites on Google news. Who's to say that next week they won't decide to sue Google for including them in their regular search indexes? After all Google's search results include a snippet of the page they link to just like their news site did. How is that any more legal?

Better for Google to just yank all links to these clowns. It's just not worth the risk of getting dragged into court again.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the newspapers in this case. By suing they pretty much asked Google to remove their links. The old adage about being careful what you wish for would seem to apply.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[oohshiny]

It is also opt-out, because you are assumed to give consent unless you take an action.

They have taken plenty of action: they put up a web server and put up the stuff on the Internet.

The judge ruled correctly based on Belgian law.

Then Belgian law is broken.

Belgium has a very stringent opt-in law, the kind that privacy advocates in the US dream about.

This has nothing to do with privacy.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[ronanbear]

I don't think anyone in this thread has defended the Belgian newspapers. I don't think they're in the right to sue Google over something that they could have done using robot.txt instead.

My point was that when I search on Google I want to trust that they will return the results I want. Instead, they have shown that they are willing to manipulate search results to punish sites. Google could have kept the morale high ground by just removing a load of links to the Belgian sites and taking them out of google news. Instead they went much further and purely out of spite they even removed access to the court judgement.

Googles role in search gives them a lot of power. If they remove something from their search results it may as well not be on the internet for a large number (a majority even) of internet users. The more they manipulate search to hurt their enemies the less trustworthy they become. As a result of this I'm now going to have to start using alternative search engines more often just in case Google have decided that they don't want me to see what I'm looking for.

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. :D

Re:what an idiotic ruling

[SydShamino]

They have taken plenty of action: they put up a web server and put up the stuff on the Internet.

Ahh yeah, just like how "being born", "getting a phone line and email address", and "living in a building" are actions that opt you in to everything under the sun in the US.

Then Belgian law is broken.

I'd take Belgian law over the US any day. Yes it's wrong in this one little particular case about robots.txt, but it's right in 99% of other opt-in cases.

This has nothing to do with privacy.

Yes it does. Opt-in is intended to ensure better privacy, by preventing the selling, sharing, or exploitation of private data unless the owner of that data allows it. Belgian law gets it 99% right; US law gets it 1% right.

Remove all links

[Midnight Thunder]

Google should remove all links to Belgian newspapers everywhere and then let the papers wonder why their traffic is at near zero.

Re:Remove all links

[CaVi]

It seems to me that you fail to get that belgian newspaper get very little from, e.g., American people stumbling randomly through a Google link on their sites. They get revenue through advertisement made for Belgian readers. If no belgian newspaper is on Google anymore, lot of Belgians will just cease to use Google, and go to another search engine, which still indexes the content of '.be' sites.

Among all the possible search engines, I guess that at least one will pay the editors for their content. If you imagine that all others stop indexing Belgium, that one (if there was only one) would be sure to become known as the most complete one. It would have token the whole (tiny) market of Belgium.

And who knows what country will follow?

Of course, this path of action is flawed. If Google (and only them) is paying, and indexing, the newspaper, and if e.g. only MSN Live indexes the official sites (and pay them?), and only Yahoo indexes (and pay) the television sites,... we'll have no way to get a global search on everything.

Re:Remove all links

[jjohnson]

No one will pay to index any news sites because it sets the precedent that content providers can charge them to let them index. It may seem like a small cost per site, but the strength of any search engine is breadth, and no search engine can afford to pay even a portion of the content they index. Especially since no search engine has a viable business model beyond advertising, a dubious income stream at best.

The Belgian newspapers shot themselves in the foot, and they'll cave after a while when they recognize that they can't strongarm Google into paying, and the cost of their attempt is a serious drop in the traffic they've come to expect.

Re:Remove all links

[AxminsterLeuven]

Google should remove all links to Belgian newspapers everywhere and then let the papers wonder why their traffic is at near zero.

That's exactly what Google did! Try googling for "Le Soir". (On google.be, on .com you still get to Le Soir's website)

killing fair use/public domain through FUD

[oohshiny]

But the fact that Google copies, changes, reassembles, etc. copyrighted information without anyone's consent should be challenged.

If they did, then it should be challenged, but that's not what they're doing.

may potentially lead to Google winning the case and setting a precedent whereby all information publicly available on the internet would be entered into the public domain or at least break ground for fair use.

If you want to put content on the Internet and not have it be indexed, archived, and/or republished, you have two simple options: use a robots.txt file or require a loging.

What is really going on is that companies like the Belgian newspapers want to destroy the public domain and fair use: if companies like Google can't assume that content that is freely available on the Internet is actually either public domain or available under fair use, then public domain and fair use are dead.

In different words, companies like the Belgian newspaper are trying to kill the public domain and fair use through FUD. And the Belgian court has handed them a victory. It's disgusting.

Re:killing fair use/public domain through FUD

[cheater512]

Does Belgium even have fair use? Australia doesnt although the law doesnt really care.
E.g. Its technically illegal to rip a cd here but a court would never rule against you for ripping your cd collection.

Re:killing fair use/public domain through FUD

[CaVi]

I get tired of defending a position that I don't support fully, but not everything is black and white as you seems to think. Why should Google make money from news that they didn't collect? Newspapers pay for information (by paying for AFP for exemple, and by sending journalists collecting information around the world, checking this info, analysing it, commenting it,...). Why could Google just aggregate those bits of information, and profit from them, without paying their sources?

Now, can we consider that the added value of Google News is such that users will stop at their page, and not click on the links? If users click, Google brings traffic to the newspaper sites, and thus money to them. If Google takes enough information, and displays it on their pages, such that users don't feel a need to click through the links to come to the newspapers sites, then those have lost revenue due to Google, when Google gained revenue from those information. And that's not fair.

Note: I know that Google News doesn't have commercials (yet), but they might have later. Also, Google News push the brand of Google, and as such brings revenue to Google. If it didn't bring them any revenue, why would they do it?

Re:killing fair use/public domain through FUD

[storem]

And yet again I'm ashamed being Belgian, luckily I can still be proud being Flemish (Dutch speaking Belgian).

I have serious doubts with these procedings, and question the views of the court's expert on this case. I'm not surprized at all this is happening in Belgium, only worried for what has become possible in this small European country...

I agree with Google's response removing all links to the French & German press in Belgium. Google should tread careful now, because the same court may force them to re-list them now. Weird how the world turns sometimes...

For me personally the removal of "the other" press from Google has no effect. French-speaking media targets another audience, runs different stories and forms quite opposite opinions than the Dutch-speaking one. The latter also being removed from Google News (on request), the Google News page doesn't make sense anymore in Belgium and could as well be stopped entirely. Complete waste of CPU cycles. For Dutch news I use the Netherlands' page, for French the one for France.

my 0.02

Re:killing fair use/public domain through FUD

[dago]

Yep, and probably even more extended than in Australia.

One example : the french-speaking "community" has state-funded libraries for music & videos called "Mediatheques". They are playing the same role as libraries for book and they are renting CD for very low prices (1$/week, when I was young). Before internet & broadband, this was one of the best way to discover alternative music. These rentals and the private copy of rented material is legal and was never even challenged by the local RIAA.

Re:killing fair use/public domain through FUD

[oohshiny]

I get tired of defending a position that I don't support fully, but not everything is black and white as you seems to think. Why should Google make money from news that they didn't collect?

Because the Belgian newspapers gave them permission to: their robots.txt file did not tell Google to stay out. And it's not surprising that such permission should be granted: other newspapers realize the value of the free advertising and traffic they get through Google.

No, what this is really about is that established media, like the Belgian newspaper, want to make it harder for non-established media, like bloggers and other information sources, to compete with them. How? By replacing the cheap and simple mechanisms for declaring digital rights that everybody can use (robots.txt) with far more costly ones that only big companies can afford (contracts).

The Reason

[andersh]

The EU was founded to create a lasting peace and cooperation in Europe - to claim anything else is just silly. Suing Microsoft has everything to do with the EU because free trade within the block is vital, and Microsoft was breaking EU competition laws and not respecting the verdict. Now when some group of Belgian companies sue Google in Belgian courts (not EU courts) it has NOTHING to do with the EU!

Headline news is enough news

[carnun]

Has anybody actually done any research showing how many people click through from news aggregate sites? I would be very surprised if most aggregate users don't just read the headlines and leave it at that. I think this (legal battle) being an issue relates more to the way in which people read the news on the Interweb. Reading only headlines leads to no thoughput to the news sites since people already believe they have all the information they need.

Re:Headline news is enough news

[mikesd81]

I think it depends on the headline and interest to a person. For instance, a headline "10% more people buy cars than trucks", I wouldn't even consider clicking on the headline. I simply don't care. Now, "Glock to buy Heckler and Koch", I would definitely read because I'm an avid firearms collector.

One word...

[D H NG]

Belgium!!

Re:One word...

[Anonymous Coward]

'replaced "fuck" in the censored American edition of the novel'

Thanks to clarify, I only read the original novel. Too bad I don't live in the US, I could claim some millions as discriminated minority, as this seems a very easy case.

Really? From what point of view?

[andersh]

You say its an outrage what the Belgian court did - I on the other hand think it says a lot about your lack of understanding for Belgian sovereignty and their independent legal system. Maybe you should not be so quick to judge something you do not know or understand. Unless you know much about the European Civil Law system (as opposed to Anglo-American common law) and Belgiums traditions you have no right to be critical of their verdict and practises. The very fact that they forced Google to publish the verdict is not so shocking to me, as a fellow European citizen, because its in fact very common for media companies to repent in this way. The humiliation has nothing do with - its letting the public know whats acceptable and not.

P.S. In no way is the robots.txt issue an open and shut case for European legal systems..

Re:Really? From what point of view?

[Anonymous Coward]

I on the other hand think it says a lot about your lack of understanding for Belgian sovereignty and their independent legal system.

This is not an issue of "Belgian sovereignty": the Belgian decision is a bad decision, period.

The very fact that they forced Google to publish the verdict is not so shocking to me, as a fellow European citizen, because its in fact very common for media companies to repent in this way. The humiliation has nothing do with - its letting the public know whats acceptable and not.

You know, your misguided comments about "sovereignty" and your blather about "European citizenship", don't change the facts: this is a bad ruling.

But what your comments show is that people like you (and probably the Belgian court) are xenophobic and arrogant, and support the impression that this bad ruling is simply an attempt by some narrow-minded nationalists at getting back at foreign companies. Fortunately, in the end, it will simply backfire: if Belgium could become any more irrelevant than it already is, this sort of stupid ruling would contribute to it.

Google makes $13 million a day.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess $640,000 / day is too much for even $13 million / day Google.

Re:Google = parasite!

[DittoBox]

Yes, and which telco astroturfer might you be?

Is it just me...

[O'Laochdha]

Or since the ruling, has the default language of the Belgian Google changed from Dutch to French?

"issues the following order..."

[O'Laochdha]

I loaded the page, and it was in French. Then I changed it to Dutch, and the introductory text changed to Dutch, but the ruling was still in French. Then I changed it to English, and the ruling was still in French! They never translated it.

Tell me, are Belgian courts in the habits of issuing rulings that only half the country can read?

Re:"issues the following order..."

[bram]

Well, all of the country can read French. :)

Re:"issues the following order..."

[evenmoreconfused]

The court order (linked to previously as a .pdf) specifically notes that the parties agreed to hear this particular case in French. Therefore it seems reasonable all subsequent documentation is in French.

Re:"issues the following order..."

[Petrushka]

Sure about that, are you? You're not aware, then, that only about 40% of the population have French as their first language?

Re:"issues the following order..."

[powro]

You are right: 60% speak Dutch, 39% speak French and 1% speak German. However, thanks to the good education system of the Dutch-speaking people, they almost all know French. You cannot tell the same of the French people, who almost do not know any other language. And about the German-speaking people, they almost all speak French as well.

Would the ruling have been published in Dutch, only half of the country could have read that.

Sorry for my bad English.

Oh, and the text formatting is very discouraging.

Re:"issues the following order..."

[Anonymous Coward]

In Belgium most of us are perfectly capable of understanding the at least gist of a text in any of the three official languages (well German is a bit weak for most). Must also know English quite well. Now for you Americans this may seem strange.

But then again even as a quite-long-time Slashdot reader (although without an account) the comments on this story are quite unnerving. Stupid jokes about the language "Belgian", about the size of the country, and so on. Virtually no one considers both points of view, defaulting to the mighty Google.

As I understand the case, Google was caching older news stories, and the newspapers would like to start a paid-for archive service. Obviously this is an uttermost stupid idea with the free cached stories still on the Web, so they ask Google to remove them from their cache. For some reason a lawsuit ensues, and Google doesn't even show up. What do you expect the court to do? Courts are only allowed to consider a the evidence presented, an that's a good thing. Thus a newspaper-friendly ruling. To repeat, the only possible ruling.

Then the slashdot crowd goes wild in the prospect about joking about these stupid Belgians.

The response of Google is also quite interesting. They do not only comply with the ruling, they remove the newspapers from their whole site, including search. Fuck all those comments about 'a financial liability', I see this as plain racketeering. 'You want us to do something? That's a fine site you have there. We wouldn't want the referals from us to stop now do we.'.

Now some slashbot will respond, but they have every right to do so. Well, I'm not speaking legally, but morally. This is just plain wrong, I believe.

Then they publish the ruling. Is there any way to make this even more unreadable? The smallest print they could find, no paragraphs, densely packed, no link to the origal. Again legally perfectly fine.

Google has lost quite some of my trust here.

On rereading this reads like troll or something like that, but I'm fucking angry, and if I'm going to get modded down for that, well fine.

Re:"issues the following order..."

[bram]

I'm a belgian and my mother tongue is Flemish.
All Flemish people get French in school from grade 5 (10 years) till they finish High School.

So in most of the cases Flemish people at least understand French.
I would assume the German speaking part does the same.

My girlfriend has a French speaking father and a Flemish speaking mother, so she got brought up in French.
She speaks and understands Flemish but at home we always speak French.

The French speaking people are a bit more reluctant to learn Flemish as anyone understands French anyway.

Re:"issues the following order..."

[fons]

Thanks for this post, I was about to write a similar comment, but I couldn't fond the correct wording.

You did an excellent job.

Too bad I don't have modpoints. I would mod you up!

Re:"issues the following order..."

[Anonymous Coward]

The court ruling was published in French and orders Google to publish it. Since "it" is in French and since the order applies to the whole of Belgium (regardless of the language spoken by the user), Google complied and published the same text in all versions of its site. Hey, you can even read the page in hax0r-speak and you will get the same text: http://www.google.be/intl/xx-hacker/

Re:"issues the following order..."

[Petrushka]

Fair enough. Very informative, thanks.

As an act of protest...

[falsified]

I will now boycott Stella Artois!

....eh, fuck this. *cracks another one open*

Belgium

[chippy99]

While we are knocking Belgium can anyone answer the old pub question "name 5 famous Belgians ?" The first 2 are easy, Eddie Mercyx and Jean Claude Van Dam but after that .......

Re:Belgium

[frost22]

isnt that van Damme ?

others ? Well ....
          Marc Dutroux ?

Re:Belgium

[Anonymous Coward]

The singing nun,
Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the sax
Jacques Rogge, the current president of the International Olympic Comittee
Rene Magritte
Peter Paul Rubens
Georges Simenon
Kim Clijsters
Justine Henin-Hardenne ...

There are actually lots of famous Belgians.

Re:Belgium

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Evil.

I hear he actually has a statue there.

Re:Belgium

[AxminsterLeuven]

All of the Smurfs, so that's thousands of famous Belgians.

Not at all...

[Magic5Ball]

Truncating it, sure, but no real modifications.

WASHINGTON (DC) -- Congress shall make no law...

We have to remember

[Anonymous Coward]

that Google is a company based in the US and that the paper, in question, hails from Belgium. Copyright laws are not universal. That being said, Belgium has every right to adopt and implemement laws that it feels are just. Just as Google has every right to do as much as they can under the US Copyright Office's Fair Use definition: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html . But, that in no way means that Belgium has to allow Google to index those foreign newspaper outlets. This is the price of globalization that we are now beginning to encounter. International law is likley not the answer, either, since so many international laws are not fully recognized due to potential loss of revenues. This should be interesting to see what Google decides to do and what news outlets, among other content creators do in the future.

Re:Only a drop from the free-loaders

[Anonymous Coward]

Web traffic is a product sold to advertisers. Free loaders or not, viewers and their clicks are a product bought and paid for.

Take away the traffic, and these news sites have lost their main source of web income. It's Google forcing the sites to vote with their own wallet.

Two more related words..

[Anonymous Coward]

Squid proxy. Surely if they go after Google, they'd have to go after everyone else in the country that uses proxies.

Google's right

[Yirimyah]

Personally, I'm here, reading this story, because Google linked me to it. Of course, the actions of real people are irrelevant to the legal system.

Web Services and Laws in other countries

[mwilliamson]

So, if I design some sort of Internet utility, and I happen to break the laws of some piss-ant country, and they sue...wtf should I care? They have no authority over me anyway...provided I don't have any sort of branch in that country, I'm safe, right?

Re:Web Services and Laws in other countries

[Anonymous Cowpat]

No. European countries have banded together to make each others laws effectively apply to people in all European countries. If you're found against in a European country that you don't have a prescence in, but do have a prescence in another European country, they'll just get the country you do have a prescence in to enforce the judgement against you. These countries will even do it against their own citiziens.
Case in point: A british couple bought some land in the turkish bit of Cyprus and built a holiday villa on it. The (Greek cypriot) people who used to own that land before cyprus was invaded still say that it's theirs. The Greek Cypriot government still lays claim to the whole of the island. A Greek Cypriot court found against the British government (because it still recognises the claim of the original owners). Not actually being in a position to enforce anything in the Turkish Cypriot part of the island, the court's decision actually meant nothing. The Greek Cypriots who owned the land then simply went to the high court in London to get the judgement enforced against the British couple (effectively a fine of ~ £150,000) and the high court, last I heard, played ball. The British government (by agreeing to enforce foreign civil judgements against domestic assets) has sold its citizens down the river.

So, the simple fact is, if you run a website and have a prescence in any European country, you are actually subject to the laws of all (since virtually all countries believe themselves to have juristiction over any website anywhere)

Do No Evil?

[DavidD_CA]

Google's motto of "Do No Evil" has one very distinct flaw:

People disagree on what "evil" means.

Obviously Google thinks it's doing the right thing by spreading information to the masses, like the information on this newspaper's website.

The newspaper, on the other hand, thinks that action is quite evil. They are losing ad revenue because of it.

Ido get it, well atleast a little bit :)

[Mofaluna]

I still fail to see how it is a copyright infringement to link to news articles? It's not like Google is hosting the article on it's own website...it's linking. It's a shame that companies are so money hungry that they want to be paid for someone directing traffic to their site. Next business will want money from taxi drivers for delivering customers.

Since it's all a bit confusing some belgian insight into the whole case: (warning: I only had two cups of coffee so far ;) )

What happened is that these newspapers temporarely put their articles public and then, typically the day after, make them non-public again. Ofcourse by then google has happily passed by and put those articles in their cache thus making them publicly availalbe while they aren't anymore. Eh voila, we have a court case.

I actually have no idea on the google cache details but I'ld expect that if you use a correct expire value in your header that they get removed again from google or that google atleast checks if the content is still available before showing it to the user. Ofcourse the newspapers could've easily used a robot.txt file to prevent google from caching these articles in the first place instead of having to go to court to achieve exactly the same thing.

Maybe a little bit of background info: In belgium we have a special court of appeal with judges that actually know something about IT, this in sharp contrast ofcourse with all those babyboomer-generation judges making up the majority of the courts, that havent got the slightests clue and probably are even afraid/angry of that whole internet thing and computers in general. Since google has appealed the deciscion, we might eventually see this ruling overturned but that might take a while (the newspapars used a special procedure for 'urgent' matters which typically results in the kind of ruling we are discussing here).

FYI: IANAL, just a belgian it guy that that tries to be a bit more informed about legal aspects of it then average, if only because of a retarted judge in germany that in essence ruled that the postal system is responsible for spam and not whomever actually took the initiative the have an email/ecard sent in the first place (yes this applies to every send to a friend feature out there) *rolleyes*

Google should shut down these newspapers

[mcewena1]

Google with all its billions could easily afford to set up their own news service in Belgium. They have the infrastructure. This would soon extensively rediuce the belgian newspapers revenue

Two reason beside goggle cache.

[celjabba]

I believe this decision to be stupid . I only ever access those sites through gnews. no more now.
But there are, i think 2 'real' reason behind this action, if you listen to what media people say here:

-targeted marketing : with google news, google get his marketing info for personnalised ads database. Not the newspaper.
i believe this is The reason behind that lawsuit. they dont care about their content, they know they will loose hits, they know people dont read the news on google cache but come to their site, but direct ads marketing is where the money will be (already is ?).
-Also, many 'paper'newspaper are dying now, surviving only with local info. So, they rely more and more on news agency feed for internationnal/nationnal news, usually changing the title and 2 words before publishing it. gnews make that very obvious, when 5 newspaper had exactly the same text, linked next to each others...

i heard tvnews site have got a 30% up hit since they are still on gnews, with a 25% down on blocked site.

Nonsense. Google was present.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google must have been present, because it was an appeals procedure (so Google appealed). Portraying the Belgian law system as one which does not invite defendants, is absurd and I wonder why you are doing so. Contrarily to what the slashdot crowd seems to think, the ruling was just and informed. Maybe you want to READ the decision?

The Flemish approach

[mhermans]

Ignoring your flaimbate jab, I do find the difference with the approach of the Flemish publishing-industry interesting. They simply chose to opt-out from Google News.be when it was launched, but stayed in de google.be index (try site:standaard.be, or site:vrtnieuws.net). The later choice seems logical if you want to get revenue from your pay-per-article section (like De Standaard), and shows that they are not opposed in principle to being indexed; but why then opt-out of Google News?

The only reason I can think of atm., is the involvement of all the major (Flemish) publishing concerns like VUM/Corelio, Roularta, Concentra, ... in Mediargus, an -- very usefull, but expensive for individuals -- aggregation en clearing service for (mainly) Flemish media.

Mabye they see Google News (but not the standard google index) as competition for that initiative? Dunno...

China Internet Site Blocking

[DryBaboon]

Aw, c'mon, if there was a problem reading it here in China, it would be about the Chinese Internet Site Blocking policies and not about Google. Notable sites blocked to us internet users in China: - wikipedia (accessible through proxy) - Technorati (utterly and completely inaccessible) - BBC (completely and totally blocked) - Anything on angelfire domain - Geocities (sometimes accessible through proxy) - Google.com (quite often blocked but you can just go to google.co.uk usually) - Google.cn (believe it... often blocked I guess because of other people's searches on your IP range) - MSN search (sometimes blocked) - Yahoo search (sometimes blocked or throttled) - DrudgeReport (depending on news items) - Just about any page about an*nymizer or pr*xy servers - and if you try to browse to a page about f*l*n g*ng your whole internet access will just stop working for half an hour. If anything the reason Google had to buckle to censorship demands in .cn was because if they let everything get searched people wouldn't be able access the results anyway and people would find their connections getting cut just for the google search results even if they hadn't clicked them. -- now to hit submit and see if this gets sniffed and blocked :\

Legal Precedent Creates a Trap for All .be links

[thethibs]

The Belgian court's decision in the Google case creates an interesting precedent. This decision could be used by anyone in Belgium whose content is the target of a link. On the basis of a link to .be, anyone could find themselves targetted and fined by a Belgian court.

Every so often a court emits a ruling that makes it impossible to know what's legal and what's not, and leaves one open to liabilities that could not possibly be predicted. This, like the EU's rulings against Microsoft (also out of Brussels), are of this kind, and the only rational response is to withdraw completely and wait for more predictable circumstances.

If I was Google's (or any other search service') lawyer, my advice would be to (1) immediately remove all .be links, (2) stop indexing .be and (3) set up an opt-in protocol that would restore indexing to any .be site that supplies a legally-binding authorization to index. Since the Belgian court has decreed that Belgians are too stupid to understand robots.txt, a corresponding opt-in flag would be insufficient.

On a positive note: nothing much of interest happpens in Belgium, so if the world is spared headlines about the rising price of mussels in Brussels, we aren't likely to notice.

Google chose not to show

[Scrameustache]

Now about the court order, there was only one party at the hearing, google never got an invitation.

FTFA: "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 ; "

For those who can't parse French: The tribunal is surprised by google's attitude, who failed to participate in the expert proceedings despite invitations to do so.

Re:Google chose not to show

[Reaperducer]

Google got the invitation, but ran it through their own translation engine, which yields:

"Waited until the court of céans does not fail to be surprised by the attitude of the defendant who did not consider it useful to take part in the mission of expertise, in spite of the invitations which had been addressed to him by the legal expert, and who does not appear."

Might as well read "Go stick your head in a pig."

circumvent the the published order

[Anonymous Coward]

It may sounds consequent to make the sentence published on the site that grab the news articles. I don't understand why it should be published on the search engine front page as well. the few number of belgians that might have read the cached articles cannot be compared whith the millions using google everyday.

so if you're a googling Belgian who is annoyed by the published order you could try http://www.hoehel.be/ (whith exactly the same search results) for a few weeks or a foreign google address in the case you're are not fluent in western flemish, in which case you should accept a more international search result.

Some people don't get it

[tre4lien]

The default should be opt-in.

Just to make sure you typed what you meant:

You are saying that the WWW is a predominantly Private media, which, by exception can be made public?

If that is really what you were saying - there is nothing wrong with that concept; after all, other parts of the internet, like FTP are certainly that way...
But I think you have a few hundred-million minds to change before people "get" that!
(And some might already be attached to the web as a 'social' venue.)

Re:Some people don't get it

[alba7]

A lot of FTP sites use standard logins like ftp/ftp or anonymous/anonymous, and hence are public.
On the other side a lot of Websites require a password to login, and hence are private.
And some rare cases even use an intermediate scheme: a non-standard, but widely circulated password.
You could even publish the HTTP password on the main page.
Then every human can read und use that information, but generic robots are locked out.

Existing use of technology gives enough leverage to implement private and semi-private pages.
So this whole issue can only be about two things:
a) technical incompetence
b) extra-ordinary greed

Same logic for Spam???

[fons]

So, according to your logic, all SPAM is legit as long as you can opt-out afterwards???

That's a dangerous attitude.

Belgium is small..

[fons]

There are about 4 milion French speaking Belgians.

That is a small market, these newspapers don't earn any money (worth mentionning) from their website's anyway.

The website are a service to existing newspaper customers.

If these customers can use google as an archive, the service becomes useless.

Other Belgium trivia

[NewsWatcher]

Probably of no interest to anyone, but there is a cattle station in Australia bigger than Belgium

Given the high number of English-speaking Belgians

[Arancaytar]

This might not have much of an impact. For example, I haven't seen the "Google Deutschland" page at google.de for many months now, because I use google.com exclusively. I've tried looking for some comparative usage stats for Google's country domains to check, but I haven't found any (I'm sure they exist though).

---

On another note, what precisely is the Belgian court accomplishing through this? And what is Google losing? It has to be significant somehow, otherwise Google wouldn't have refused and the courts wouldn't have threatened them with billions in fines...

Idiots

[Cervantes]

Yeah, because if you want to keep people from reading something except by your explicitly defined methods, putting it on the Internet is a great way to keep it locked down.

Idiots. Everything posted on the net is fair game, imho. Suggesting otherwise is just silly.