Google loses in Belgian court

Judge orders Google to stop reproducing articles from the French press in the news section of one of its Belgian sites.

The story "Google loses in Belgian court" published September 18, 2006 at 5:19 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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Old-school thinking in action

It is a pity that this publisher fails to realise that more people might actually be visiting their website because of a listing on Google News.

[MEmediaCommentator]

Who gets to define the newspaper's interest?

the newspaper probably does gain by google's searhc and link activities, but the newspaper has the right to determine how and under what circumstances their property (their stories) appear and are used. This is their discretion, not google's, and as "old school" as their thinking might be, the newspaper has the right to be wrong.

[Pants Rabbit]

Bad Business

This is more than just Old-School thinking in action. They've placed their site/information/article out into the public domain. Google news doesn't take the pages and display them as their own they LINK to them. They are simply pushing traffic to the site where the information is provided. They are, so to speak, biting one of the hands that feeds them. That isn't old-school thinking, its plain and simple, bad business.

[joebuff75]

Google News will be missed

To bad that the big Belgien newspapers decided it's not worth
getting traffic from Google News. I really liked the Google News
concept. It gives me an overview what's written in our
newspapers and then I can decide to read the full article which
should diplay ads sold by the newspapers. However they don't
monetize their sites enough -- they could use Google AdSense
on their sites to make money from the articles...

Earlier this year, I actually asked Google if they could include
more Belgian news in their news section. My initial request and
Google's answer is at:
http://support.euregio.net/blog/2006/02/10/google-news/

[zaznet]

Google's explicit illegal activity...

Google displays to it's viewers a partial reproduction of copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owner and does so in order to make a profit.

There are no laws to protect companies like Google because how Google uses the copyrighted works is relatively new to copyright law.

I remain hopeful that these silly lawsuits will drive legislation that will protect the general free use of copyrighted works when such use benefits the copyright owner directly. Google searches benefit the owners of that copyrighted work, even though the use is either not protected by law or is explicitly illegal.

[emeraldgate]

Google

Yes, using someone else's copyrighted material is illegal. How can anyone suggest that this illegal activity be protected?

The question is how will Google accomplish this and if they have complied with it.