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Belgian Newspapers Delisted On Google
D H NG writes "After being ordered by the Belgian courts to 'remove from its Google.be and Google.com sites, and in particular, cached links visible on Google Web and the Google News service, all articles, photographs and graphics of daily newspapers published in French and German by Belgian publishers,' Google had removed all traces of the newspapers in question from all its search services. The newspapers, however, are crying foul, and alleged that it was done in retaliation for being sued for copyright violations."
What are you gonna do about it?
(Google does support a noarchive robots extension tag, so instead of suing Google, you could have had just the search results without content by simply adjusting your server output.)
Help me out:
#2 is the exact thing the court ordered in #1, right?
So why, O, why, are the publishers whining in #3:
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I think the correct response is "tough". Google have no obligation to include your site in their search results and if you start fucking around claiming copyright violation then the easiest way for Google to deal with it is to remove any trace of your sites entirely.
Welcome to the unintended consequences of your actions. Next time think about what you're doing a little harder.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Sounds to me like that court order pretty much required Google to do what they did. I assume the newspapers simply didn't realise exactly what it was they were really asking for when they made that attack, and I'm sure their competitors are loving them for it right now.
If Google doesn't remove them from its searches, they demand money on the basis of ridiculous copyright claims.
If Google does remove them, they demand money on the basis of Google abusing its monopoly to punish them.
I know it doesn't make sense if you're sane, but that's how these sorts of people reason.
I don't understand the logic behind the whining of these newspapers. First they sue Google for making their content discoverable. Then the court orders Google to remove the content. Google complies. Now the papers are whining about Google removing their content. What exactly is it that they want ?
I think they want to have their cake and eat it too.
They want to appear on Google web searches, but they don't want to be aggregated on Google News.
Google doesn't want to have to deal with another lawsuit over whether this link or that link is illegal. Nor are they going to spend extra money trying to be nice to somebody who used a blunderbuss lawsuit against them.
All of the links that they want removed are removed. Job done. The rest is just Google being very, very thorough.
It's kinda like a kid pissing on a wasps nest and complaining that the wasps didn't just quietly wait to drown. He'll be holding his breath a long time waiting for me to feel sorry for him -- or stop laughing, for that matter.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
So they thought that "pay us for using our content" meant "now you have to use our content and then pay us". Oops, maybe not!
It does sound like a particularly (French-)Belgian idea, though. Next we'll hear they are parking tractors on the Information Superhighway in protest...
Which does raise some interesting questions about how Google works on the backend. I wonder if it's actually possible for a news site to appear on one and not the other with how Google's search database is setup.
Yes it is perfectly possible, via the application of robots.txt. THis is purely a story about publishers deciding they want to fleece Google for some cash rather than just apply the relevant settings to their robots.txt files. Guess it kind of backfired on them. Karma or something.
All these companies and sites that get all pissy with google over stupid stuff...
First thing google should do in any case of complaints or being sued is to strip ALL refrences to the offending site/company from their index.
"We feel the only contact we should have with $org$ is thru our lawyers."
As a google investor i like this idea.
By far the most common of the three languages in Belgium is Dutch.
The German-speaking community in Belgium is tiny by comparison.
And with good reason, too, after having been run over by German armies twice in 30 years despite having declared neutrality beforehand and then having suffered the privations of 2 military occupations. It's about the same in Belgium as in Denmark: a really good way to get yourself ignored is to try to start a conversation in German.
Do you actually live anywhere near the Belgian-German border? My sister lives on the Maas, so she could spit on Belgium from her front door. (Ok, not quite, but close.) She also lives about 2km from the German border. She took me to a horse accessories place, and a person came in to get her riding shoes repaired, and spoke German to the attendant. My sister spoke Dutch to the attendant.
"Ok, but that's Flemland." My mother had a medical incident in Brussels, and we had an unscheduled two week extra stay. I spoke German, and got really as much traction with German as I did with English. I even purchased a copy of der Spiegel at the hospital giftshop. Hell, the first time I watched "A Dinner for One" was on TV in Brussels.
This idea that Europe has some dark brooding resentment to German, and will shun anyone who attempts to speak it, is at best an over-exaggeration of a minority. Only in the US do we have this idea that Germany continues to suffer ill thought for World War 2. My sister's husband speaks fluent German as well as Dutch, because that's what he had to learn, because they were the powerhouse economy. You can't really afford to snub the Germans in Europe, and even then, Germany now is a completely different place from when the Nazis are in power, and Americans would do well to get that through their thick skulls.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Man, you're fond of that phrase. It's at least the second post you've used it verbatim in. Let's have a look at it.
"Foreign": Not to me, they're not. And everybody's foreign to somebody.
"Private": Which means they don't have the right to extract money and obedience by force. Oooh, evil.
"Unaccountable": On the contrary, they're very accountable--to the people who do searches. If they compromise their ability to serve up accurate, comprehensive and useful searches, people will go elsewhere. They're not accountable at all to the sites being searched, and a damn good thing, too.
I'm happy that Google takes the high road more often than not.
In this case, Google has done exactly what the court ordered, well according to this English translation :
Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from all their sites (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000 per day of delay
If the court had issued a more detailed order, like banning Google News only but granting Google web search a fair use exemption, then I'm sure Google would've followed that order instead.
If the court had merely banned Google from displaying the pictures and text snippets, but explicitly permitted them to use the titles, then Google would likely still show the results in Google News, but ranked very lowly. Search results should obviously not be cluttered up by stupid links without summaries.
I'd guess the paper's layer obtained this strong language thinking they'd negotiate some licensing deal with google. Yet first, google must obviously implement the literal court order as written. duh! Second, any licensing deal is unlikely to benefit the papers much because the papers depend more upon google than google depends upon them. Why should google buy their text snippets when other good Belgian papers give text snippets about the same subject matter for free?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Also Google News could only steal their readers if the newspapers actually had stories that couldn't be found on other publications. If they're just copy-pasting AP/AFP/whatever articles they're getting crushed on the internet either way.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Google said an order issued in the case required it to exclude the newspapers' websites.
This does appear to be the case. Remove content from "all your sites" is very broad, and with the penalties mentioned I'd remove them, too. Seems an entirely reasonable response to that court order, especially accompanied by the relist offer.
The paper La Capitale said on its web site Friday that Google had begun "boycotting" it.
Google spokesman William Echikson said the court decision applied to web search as well as Google News and the company faced fines of 25,000 euros ($35,359 per infringement if it allowed the newspapers' websites to keep appearing.
"We regret having to do so," he said. "We would be happy to re-include Copiepresse if they would indicate their desire to appear in Google Search and waive the potential penalties."
See that last line? Google has explicitly said, give us permission to list you in search again and we will, no questions asked. So all the people jumping up and down about Google abusing their monopolistic power... no. They aren't.
I really don't see how this is anything but a cash grab by the newspapers that misfired. After Google's offer to relist them as soon as they have permission, it's going to be quite awkward to A) deny Google that permission and then B) sue Google for delisting you. But I'm certain the newspapers will try. The delist and offer to relist seems to be a simple attempt to cut through legal shenanigans on Google's part. "We can list you or not list you. Say which one you want and we'll do it." And then afterwards, they can't cry about being unhappy with their status anymore with any real credibility.
It actually looks a little more to me like they wanted to control which documents google indexed legally instead of technically and google said "we already have given you a technical mechanism to utilize and if you won't then you're too much trouble and we will route around you like the damage you are". Your summary sentence is still accurate, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Any papers could exclude exactly the content they want excluded from exactly the google sites they want it excluded because Google's news indexer has a separate user agent.
If they get an injunction however, then Google must obviously read the injunction as broadly as possible to avoid fines.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You get better beer than the rest of Europe though! :)
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
- Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from all their sites (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000.- ? per day of delay;
There is nothing stopping you from creating a search engine of your own and implementing policies which would be more to your liking. I've had webpage crawling assignments as a undergraduate CS assignment. It isn't all that complicated.
The trick is to get something which can handle the billions of hits per day like Google and to be able to set up the logic so you don't have people gaming whatever system you are doing. They've built a better mousetrap and lots of people are using it. I used many other web search portals before Google, and for me they aren't anything all that special. Google just does what it is that they do better, and the search results are more relevant.
If you want to patronize another search engine, use Lycos instead, or perhaps something else. If you live somewhere other than America, you might want to consider creating a community-based project (open source is something I'd recommend) that is based in your own country, thus giving you that "domestic, public, fully accountable organization" you are hoping for. Let me know when you get that search engine going!
And yes I'm being serious. This is the internet and there is no single solution for anything. You aren't even required to use TCP for sending data if you don't care to.
Google responded to a query from a dutch newsite regarding this issue.
Source: http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/107318/google-verbant-belgische-kranten--uitgevers-woest.html
Relevant quote, translated:
``We regret having taken this action, and are open for future cooperation with members of Copiepresse. Would we keep the material in our index, we risk fines up to 25,000 euro per incident. We would be pleased to include Copiepresse in our index if they declare they want to be included on Google Search and refrain from potentional charges``, Google declares to Webwereld.
Original response in dutch:
``"Het spijt ons dat we dit moeten doen, en we staan open voor samenwerking met leden van Copiepresse in de toekomst. Zouden we het materiaal in de index houden, dan riskeren we boetes tot 25.000 euro per inbreuk. We nemen Copiepresse graag weer op in de index als ze aangeven op Google Search te willen verschijnen en afzien van potentiële boetes", verklaart Google tegenover Webwereld.``
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Copiepresse's lawyers won a strongly worded injunction on behalf of these three papers. Google is making sure they don't violate it.
Ironically, the papers already had the ability to control how their content was displayed on google, through the nosnippets and nocache flags in metatags, google news' separate user agent id, etc. All they've achieved is : Now the papers must pay Copiepresse lawyers to make those changes slowly rather than paying their own technical people to make them quickly.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Just like the idiots shouting about how Apple is a monopoly and how everyone should sue them to make AppStore open.
Newsflash: market majority doesn't equal monopoly. There alternatives both for Google and for Apple.
Is there any wonder why everybody hates lawyers. "Utterly precise, verbose" legal language is incomprehensible to the party subjected to it, such that they can be sanctioned for following it to the letter. This is the ultimate bullshit that leads to disrespect for law. Nobody can live their life without tripping over voluminous shit laws designed to trap an innocent party that happens to piss off the establishment. If the revolution ever does come, I wouldn't want to be a lawyer of a politician
And no. If I have to ask a judge for clarification for such a simple order, the judge is just making it up as he goes, adjusting it to his own wishes. And if it wasn't what he wanted in the first place, he should NOT have signed such a dumb assed order. He is being paid to know what the hell he is doing, not just wing it and see how it goes. .
Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it!.