[Ecommerce] Bad News fro google in Belgium

[Manon Ress]

Sunday, 24 September 2006, 09:00 CDT

Bad News for Google in Belgium It Defies Court Ruling in Copyright Case
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/668137/
bad_news_for_google_in_belgium_it_defies_court_ruling/index.html?
source=r_technology

By Eric Pfanner

A copyright dispute between Google and a group of publishers in
Belgium escalated Friday as the Internet search engine defied a court
order to publish an earlier decision in the case on its Belgian Web
sites.

A judge rejected Google's argument that the original decision had
been so widely reported that posting it on google.be and the
associated Google News site was unnecessary and "disproportionate."
The earlier decision required Google to stop displaying extracts of
French- and German-language articles from Belgian newspapers. Google
faces a fine of 500,000, or $640,000, for every day it fails to
comply with the order to publish the decision; it said it planned to
fight the order issued Friday as part of a broader argument, set for
November, in which it would seek to overturn the initial ruling.

"We will now further appeal this measure, because we believe it is
disproportionate and unnecessary, given the extensive publicity the
case has received already, especially while its substance has yet to
be debated in court," Google said in a statement.
The case has attracted widespread interest among news organizations
across Europe and beyond because of the potential implications for
publishers struggling to make money on the Internet. While many
online publishers rely on Google and other search engines to drive
traffic to their sites, they complain that they end up seeing little
revenue as a result. Google News, which displays only headlines and
extracts of articles, does not include advertising, but Google's
search engine is the biggest ad generator on the Internet. While some
publishers say the decision in Belgium could set an important
precedent across the European Union, lawyers say the implications
remain unclear. Matthew Harris, a partner at the law firm Norton Rose
in London, said copyright law was less harmonized across the 25-
nation bloc than are other aspects of intellectual property law.


While Google faces another legal challenge from a newsgathering
organization, filed in France and the United States by Agence France-
Presse, some publishers say they would like to reach an agreement
with the search engine that benefits both sides.
Copiepresse, the organization that brought the claim in Belgium, said
it would drop its case if Google agreed to adopt a technical solution
being developed by several publishers' groups, said Margaret Boribon,
general secretary of Copiepresse.
The software-based system would allow publishers to manage digital
copyrights by attaching conditions of publication to articles or
other materials online. The system, set to be introduced next month
at the Frankfurt Book Fair, would inform the "Web crawlers" used by
search engines of those conditions.

In the meantime, Boribon argued that the lawsuit had been necessary.
"The problem is that when you first contact them, they just ignore
you," she said of Google. "Suddenly, when there are millions at
stake, they answer."

The Belgian court, Boribon said, on Friday rejected Google's argument
that it had had insufficient time to prepare for an August hearing at
which the initial decision in the case was issued. While Google, in
response to that ruling, has stopped indexing the Belgian newspapers'
content on Google News and has removed it from google.be, Boribon
argued that the company had not fully complied with the order by
keeping links active from other Google sites, which are also
accessible from Belgium. D.J. Collins, a Google spokesman, noted that
publishers could already request that their content be removed from
Google News or searches. Many publishers' efforts are aimed in the
other direction at pushing their content higher in Google searches.

Still, Collins said the company would "look carefully" at the
proposal cited by Boribon. "We welcome any initiative that enables
search engines and publishers to work together more closely."

2006 International Herald Tribune.

************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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