Update: Google “Loses” Copyright Case in Belgium
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 13, 2007 | Share This
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Google has lost the rehearing of the copyright suit launched by Copiepresse, a Belgian newspaper organization. According to Copiepresse, Google’s method of indexing content violates Belgian copyright law, stating in the original court order, “the activities of Google News and the use of the Google cached violate in particular the laws on copyright and ancillary rights (1994) and the law on data bases (1998)”. After a speedy first trial in September, a Belgian judge ordered Google 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”
and to,
“publish, in a visible and clear manner and without any commentary from her part the entire intervening judgment on the home pages of ‘google.be’ and of ‘news.google.be’ for a continuous period of 5 days within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 500,000,- € per day of delay.”
Google demanded a re-trial, claiming that they had not been notified of the summons and were thus unable to properly defend their case. Bloomberg reports the results of the re-trial:
” Google, the owner of the world’s most-used search engine, must pay 25,000 euros ($32,500) a day until it removes all Belgian news content, the Brussels Court of First Instance ruled today. There’s “no exception” for Google in copyright law, the court said. The Mountain View, California-based company said it has already removed the content and will appeal the ruling.”
Though some have speculated that this case could open the door to a “mass opt-out of the Google index“, a representative from Google’s legal counsel told Danny Sullivan,
“Because of the legal system in most European countries, there is no rule of precedence. That means the court here was really asked to apply the law on the specific situation and on the plaintiffs in this situation… We have no plans to modify the product [how Google crawls and list sites] itself. Since this case has been fairly high profile, we would assume any publishers [in Belgium] that have problems being in the index would have come to us. And if they do it today, we’d remove them as we’ve always done.”
BTW - if you’re unfamiliar with this case, read Danny’s extensive recap of the saga.
As I wrote before, the ruling will likely hurt Copiepresse more than it hurts Google - by removing their content from the search index, the Belgian papers reduce their own visibility and traffic. The brunt of the problem seems to be not in Google’s index or in Belgian law, but in Copiepresse’s lack of understanding about how search engines work.
Related Posts:
- Google v. Copiepresse: Greed is Suicide for Belgian Press
- Competitors Can’t Live With or Without Google
- World Association of Publishers Doesn’t Speak Search
Topics: Google, Legal Issues, Publishing |