Belgian Newspapers Delisted On Google 385
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."
A case of be careful what you wish for (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm trying to parse this (Score:4, Informative)
they didn't want to get automatically syndicated to google's news portals. so they asked to be removed from that auto syndication, which probably was giving them headaches as they didn't have copyrights to allow for such. so now what google did was to remove them totally from google services. it's just one example why you should keep a search service separate from auto generated portals. or just reform copyright and get out of the mess.
but i'd imagine for example if they license a story from reuters or whatever, they're only licensing it for their own use and not for re-licensing - which would be needed to auto syndicate it to google news site.
this is only sort of fair, you see, building a service like google news isn't hard at all - what's hard is letting the content providers let you do it.
Re:Uh, tough? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm trying to parse this (Score:4, Informative)
The english document that is available seem to support Google.
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
It sounds very weird, probably machine-translated, but 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 sounds pretty straight-forward.
Re:I'm trying to parse this (Score:5, Informative)
but i'd imagine for example if they license a story from reuters or whatever, they're only licensing it for their own use and not for re-licensing - which would be needed to auto syndicate it to google news site.
Google never has "auto-syndicated" anything from the news websites it aggregates on google news. At most it thumbnails images, pulls headlines and lead sentences. Every full-content article you find hosted on news.google.com itself was licensed from the newswires by google themselves.
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, this is partly a case of a poorly written summary. From reading the second article, here's the short version.
A number of newspapers in Belgium won a suit against Google for putting their papers in Google News. The judge in the case ordered Google to remove the sites. Rather than just removing the sites from their news aggregator, they also delisted them from their search engine.
Depending on how much slack you want to give Google, this is either a case of the judge's order being over broad or Google deliberately implementing it in an over broad fashion in order to make a point. I tend toward the latter interpretation; they are not so subtly reminding the papers that they need Google more than Google needs their content.
Now the newspapers are crying foul. They do want to get listed in search results when someone goes looking for them, but don't want to be "plagiarized" (their interpretation, not mine) by Google News.
Re:I'm trying to parse this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the link pointing to the actual judge's order. You see:
- 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;
What don't you understand with "from all their sites". Then in the clarification between brackets it says again: "or any other name".
Re:Of course it was done in retaliation. (Score:5, Informative)
More: the Google News bot has a different User-Agent, so you can block it without blocking the search engine crawler.
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=93977 [google.com]
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
...from all their sites (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name) ...
Heh. Be careful what you ask for. You might get it. Also sounds like the Judge is wearing his ass for a hat but that's so common it isn't newsworthy.
I'm not sure how this works in Belgium, but in the US, the moving party typically writes the order themselves, and the judge just signs off. So, it's entirely likely that the Belgian Newspapers screwed themselves by trying to ensure that there weren't loopholes to their order.
I know this is Slashdot, but read the article (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Google's response (Score:4, Informative)
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 [webwereld.nl]
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.``
Re:Money (Score:2, Informative)
unless you expect Google to pull a Clinton and ask the judge to define the word "all".
Yes, that is in point of fact exactly what I am suggesting, though Clinton is a bad example of this concept.
When an instruction is too broad or inclusive it is perfectly okay, expected even, to ask the judge "Uh your honour, did you really mean that?" Then if they did really mean that, you follow the order to the letter. Not asking for clarification can be a very bad idea, especially when the intent and wording don't match, as is the case here.
Put another way; if the situation were reversed and Google stood to lose if they followed the court order to the letter, you can be damn sure their lawyers would be asking for clarification. As it stands, Google didn't stand to lose by being deliberately literal, but the newspapers did.