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Google Relents, Publishes Belgian Ruling

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-is-afraid-of-belgium dept.

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."

6 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright is copyright by MLopat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Copyright is copyright by mindtriggerz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Copyright is copyright by Mr2cents · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
  2. And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    in webtraffic.

    Good for them.

    Will they sue Yahoo/MSN next?

    1. Re:And the Belgian newspapers will see a drop by Ronald+Dumsfeld · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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
      --
      Where's the Kaboom?
      There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
  3. Missing the Point by Pinky3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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