Google News Found Guilty of Copyright Violation

schmiddy writes "A court in Brussels, Belgium, has just found Google guilty of violating copyright law with its Google News aggregator. According to the ruling, Google News' links and brief summaries of news sources violates copyright law. Google will be forced to pay $32,600 for each day it displayed the links of the plaintiffs. Although Google plans to appeal, this ruling could have chilling effects on fair use rights on the web in the rest of Europe as well if other countries follow suit."

Re:What's good for the goose...

[malsdavis]

I don't some of the top newspapers in Belgium will see their traffic "plummet to zero" because their not listed on google.

Media organisations are in the unique position that they are able to readily attract hits without using search engines like google as they already have a massive advertising medium - themselves. Have you ever visited a national newspaper webiste by searching for "national newspaper" in google?

I know I haven't and I bet it is quite rare that people discover their sites that way.

Re:What's good for the goose...

[Bill Dimm]

Maybe Google should just delink the sites altogether, that way the offended media organizations can watch their traffic plummet to zero?

From the article:

Google carries advertising on its general Belgian site, Google.be, but not in its news index. Links to the publications represented by Copiepresse have already been removed from both.

Re:Saw This Yesterday

[compro01]

that one was about google cache infringing on copyright. this one is about google news infringing on copyright.

so yes, multiple court cases.

Re:What's good for the goose...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I haven't and I bet it is quite rare that people discover their sites that way.

In my experience, you'd be betting wrong. Since browsers started autosearching "i'm feeling lucky" google results*, people have indeed been just typing in e.g. "Irish Times" and indeed relying on google to get them to the relevant site, at least here in europe.

(* firefox is at least 20% of european browsers (source: Xiti), though it's lower worldwide).

Personally, I oppose copyright laws full stop, and I'm all for european unity, I just oppose the EU in particular. Belgium/brussels is the EU equivalent of washington d.c. , it's no surprise they've pulled something as assinine as this.

Fair Use?

[Luscious868]

This has nothing to do with fair use. Google is using copyrighted material to turn a profit. We're not talking about some not for profit blogger here or a journalist sighting portions of an article on some other site to further a point. This is Google using copyrighted material to turn a profit in the form of increased advertising revenue and the company in question has every right to sue to prevent others from profiting from content that they have created.

Re:Do socialist countries just hate big business?

[Tom]

Belgium isn't a socialist country. I'll refrain from the usual anti-american comments, though they've rarely been more adequate.

Belgium [wikipedia.org] is a constitutional monarchy, and it's current prime minister [wikipedia.org] is a member of the VLD party [wikipedia.org], which started out as a right-wing party and has since moved towards a centrist view.

You can read it all on Wikipedia if you spend 30 seconds looking for it. Provided you don't consider reading a socialist skill.

Re:Saw This Yesterday

[Incoherent07]

No, they're the same case. The original article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070213.w2belggoogle0213/BNStory/Business/home [theglobeandmail.com]

This article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/business/14googl e.html?_r=2&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin [nytimes.com]

Notice they both talk about Google News and a group of French newspapers.

Re:Do socialist countries just hate big business?

[Tom]

You live in Belgium, excellent.
Have you ever lived in an actual socialist country, to compare?

I'm a German, we've had an excellent long-term experiment in socialism in a part of our country. My family has friends from Russia. An ex-girlfriend of mine was from Poland and my wife's family is from Romania. I'm entirely certain that in order to consider western European countries "socialist", you have to have an extremely tainted, simplified and biased view of the world - and absolutely zero first-hand experience of actual socialist countries.

Re:What's good for the goose...

[walt-sjc]

Lycos will end up getting sued too - it's not just google. Google is just the largest target at the moment.

Re:IP Rights.

[Hognoxious]

Even the mauve, taupe, and paisley ones?

Paisley's a pattern, not a colour, but you could argue that it's synonymous with ORANGE!!! [wikipedia.org].

Re:Do socialist countries just hate big business?

[rossifer]

Um, Socialism has a whole spectrum of definitions. France and Sweden call themselves socialist, aren't too hard for a Belgian to visit, and are very similar in practice to what the gp described (high taxes, large public sector, etc.). Also, I don't know why Russia, Poland, Romania, or the now historical East Germany would have been called socialist in the past. They went right past socialist and straight to dysfunctional communism.

But, like I originally said, I suspect it all depends on your definition... Most of the readers here will accept that Western Europe is mostly socialist and that Eastern European countries are still figuring things out after their experience with communism (not socialism). But I do remember that the USSR stood for "United Soviet Socialist Republics", even though nobody in the West ever really bought the assertion that the USSR was a socialist state... so clearly it isn't only you.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Belgium IS NOT FRANCE!!! FFS

[loconet]

"Belgium is NOT famous for good food. Trust me on this one"

I won't trust you. As a matter a fact, you are straight out lying. I am married to a Belgian woman, and been to Belgium several times, and I can tell you from personal experience that they do have excellent food beyond "Ham and fries with cheese". Most of the food I tried was French influenced, cooked with a lot of wine, red and white meats, sea food, etc. Delicious stuff. I don't think one has to even mention their world renown deserts (chocolate, waffles) and beers.

That history of occupation you mentioned influenced Belgian cuisine a lot. It has allowed it to offer a magnificent mix of tastes from that part of Europe while still keeping a Belgian signature on the dishes. If there is one thing Belgians know how to do, it is eat and drink. Belgium cuisine may not be the most famous in the world but it is not something to sniff at, it is quiet good.