By Jan Libbenga for The Register. This article has
been reproduced with permission.
Recently Google launched its Belgian version of Google News,
which scans some 400 Belgian news sites. However, the Belgian
newspaper editors were extremely unhappy with the service and
demanded some form of agreement or at least financial
compensation.
Google disagreed, and argued that it doesn't republish entire
articles and that their service is within “fair use” policies. It
also allows publishers to opt out of Google News. Most publishers,
however, want to be included in Google News because they believe
it's a benefit to them and their readers, Google says.
The recent
lawsuit was filed only by the publishers of the newspapers Le
Soir, La Libre Belgique and La dernière herure. The Dutch-language
newspapers in Belgium represented by Reprocopy press haven’t filed
a lawsuit yet.
There are currently at least two other lawsuits against Google
over its news service: one in the US (District Court of Columbia)
and one in France (Paris Commercial Court). Last year, Agence
France Presse (AFP) sued Google over inclusion of its content in
Google News. Among other things, AFP said Google removed photo
credits and copyright notices in violation of federal law. Google
then decided to remove all AFP content.
© The Register
2006
