Google reinstates Belgian papers to search engine results

Google has told reporters that it will once again allow its search engine to display content from newspapers which are members of the Copiepresse agency that has successfully sued it over snippets displayed in the Google News service.

According to a report from technology news service CNET, the newspapers claimed that Google had been "unnecessarily aggressive" in removing them from the search engine.

Google told CNET that it welcomed the move.

In May the Belgian Court of Appeals ruled that Google had infringed the copyright in newspaper reports when it linked to the papers' websites or copied sections of stories on its Google News service. The ruling backed an earlier judgment by the Court of First Instance in Belgium.

Copiepresse, an agency acting for newspapers, sued Google on behalf of the papers in 2006 alleging that Google's services infringed the papers' copyright. The newspapers argued that they were losing online subscriptions and advertising revenue because Google was posting free snippets of the stories and links to the full article on Google News.

Google's search engine offers links to the websites it indexes but also to 'cached' copies of those pages. The copies are stored on Google's own servers.

A Belgian judge ruled that Google had to remove all the content referring to Belgian newspaper stories from its services. That ruling was upheld at the Court of First Instance in Belgium in February 2007. Google had argued that its use came under a fair use exemption, but the court disagreed.

Google filtered out the websites from search results in a move it claimed was to comply with a Belgian court ruling, according to an Associated Press report.

The papers then claimed that the ruling did not apply to Google's search engine results, the papers said.

Google said it was pleased it could reinstate search results to the Belgian newspaper websites.

"We are delighted that Copiepresse has given us clearance to re-include their sites in our Google search index," Google said, according to the CNET report. "We will do this as quickly as possible. We never wanted to take their sites out of our index, but we needed to respect a court order until Copiepresse acted. We remain open to working in collaboration with Copiepresse members in the future."

Google had said it would be happy to include the Belgian newspaper websites in its search results if they would waive the potential penalties a court could issue, according to a report by Associated Press.

Google said it believed the May court ruling applied to its search engine results as well as to its Google News coverage, according to the report.

In its ruling the Belgian Court of Appeals said Google could be fined roughly €25,000 for every day it fails to comply with its judgment.

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