[A2k] Bloomberg News: Court rules Google violated copyright laws

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

  Court rules Google violated copyright laws

Bloomberg News
Tuesday, February 13, 2007

BRUSSELS

A Brussels court ruled Tuesday that Google violated copyright laws by
publishing links to Belgian newspapers without permission and ordered
the company to remove them, setting a precedent for future cases.

Google, the owner of the world's most-used search engine, must pay
=8025,000, or $32,500, a day until it removes all Belgian news content,
the Brussels Court of First Instance ruled. There is "no exception" for
Google in copyright law, the court said.

The company, based in Mountain View, California, said it had removed
the content and will appeal the ruling.

The case may restrict how Internet sites in Europe link to newspaper
content. Copiepresse, a group representing 17 French- and
German-language newspapers including La Libre Belgique and Le Soir, had
sued Google for copyright infringement, arguing the company should not
be allowed to link to their newspaper content for free.

"Google will have to reach a deal to make it worthwhile for newspapers
to cooperate," David Hooper, a newspaper lawyer and partner at Reynolds
Porter Chamberlain in London, said. "There is a tendency for Google to
use things for free and reach a deal later."

Copiepresse plans to target all search engines that offer similar
services, its secretary general, Margaret Boribon, said in a telephone
interview last month. Yahoo, which received a formal notice from the
group in January, will not be the last, she said.

Google postponed plans for a Danish news site last year after
newspapers complained. In 2005, Agence France- Presse, the French news
agency, sued Google for using its reports for free.

"This judgment doesn't stop us negotiating," Yoram Elkaim, a lawyer for
Google, said.

Google News was introduced in Belgium in January 2006, showing
headlines, photos and the first few lines of news stories with links to
the full articles on the newspapers' Web sites. The case is part of a
global drive by newspaper publishers to force search engines to pay for
using their stories and pictures.

The newspapers sued in September and won a court order that forced
Google to remove all links to their content or face a =801 million daily
fine. Elkaim said the company had complied and removed the content. The
editors maintain that some content is still on the systems.

The company argues that using headlines and text fragments with links
to newspaper Web sites on Google News is legal.

The Belgian newspaper editors, including Franc=B8ois Le Hodey, chief
executive officer of La Libre Belgique, say their content creates
"colossal traffic" for search engines, which is profitable only for
them.


---------------------------------
Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org