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Google
Google claims it was "blindsided" by the court decision against its Belgian news site. (Financial Times) |
(UPDATE SEPT. 19: A Jupiter research analyst comments on why newspapers should embrace Google News.)
Today, Elsevier reports (in Dutch) that a court in Brussels has ordered the Belgian edition of Google News to stop publishing products belonging to a group of German- and French-language publishers.
According to the Financial Times, this case was brought by Copiepresse, "a media copyright organization on behalf of publications including La Libre Belgique and Le Soir, two Belgian French-language national newspapers." Dutch-language publishers (the third most common language spoken in Belgium) have not yet turned to the court.
Google News has complied with the verdict. If it hadn't, Google would have had to pay €1 million per day in damages -- plus €500,000 per day when it would not publish the verdict on its site starting yesterday.
Express.be reports that the court adopted the perspective of expert witness Luc Golvers that Google News is not a search engine, but a news portal.
The court found that copyright infringement happens because in Google News publishers lose control over their product. Specifically, Google's cache function allows Internet users to read articles even after they have been removed from the Web by the publisher.
Also, Golvers claimed that Google News allows readers to avoid commercial messages delivered by original publishers.
In Express.be, Belgian Internet entrepreneur and IT consultant Luc van Braekel suggests that Belgian publishers do not want to block access of their information to Google News, since there are enough technical tools available to stop search robots. "They just want to earn some money," he wrote.
