Printed media vs. google (Belgium)

[Element Alpha]

Hi again

Some may remember the movie about news corporations taking a stand against google, created a few years ago. They updated it. I recommend you watch the movie here: http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/

What this movie predicted is actually happening right now. In Belgium, a group of news corporations have sued google over its indexing capabilities and its google news service. The court has ruled in favor of the news corporations and has required that Google do two main things within 10 days of receipt:

1. Remove French and German-language content from the publishers from Google Belgium's web sites or pay a fine of €1 million per day

2. Publish the ruling on Google Belgium and Google News Belgium or pay a fine of €500,000 per day

Google has simply removed the news corporations' sites from their google.be search engine but for some reason refuses to publish the ruling.

news short story version

elaborate story version

Google has appealed the verdict and the case is expected to be handled again somewhere around november I believe.

Old printed media vs google: place your bets.

 

[Sebastian]

1984

 

[Beerdude26]

Who's what now? I'm not following this news

 

[Element Alpha]

They all sued google. The court ruled in their favor.

dhnet.be
grenzecho.be
lacapitale.be
lalibre.be
lameuse.be
lanouvellegazette.be
laprovince.be
lecho.be
lequotidiendenamur.be
lesoir.be
pressbanking.com
votrejournal.be

To me these are clear signs that large media corporations are in panic. But what do they fear so much?

 

[Man|-|unter]

uh...?

 

[Parrot of doom]

Good. Just because Google is popular doesn't give it the right to reproduce another company's content without permission.

 

[15357]

Cool.

 

[Element Alpha]

Good. Just because Google is popular doesn't give it the right to reproduce another company's content without permission.

Right. You realize that by content you mean words. Your phrase should be: "Just because Google is popular doesn't give it the right to reproduce another company's words without permission."

Google simply indexes their content and lists it for easy reading. What google is doing is revolutionary. You get to see different news sources' views on matters in just a few clicks.

Crappy newspapers I say. They're seeing this 'internet-thing' and they don't plan to do anything about it except maybe annoy the living sh*t out of it. They remind me of very old smelly people wondering what happened to the good old days.

 

[15357]

Google has no right to reproduce another company's words without permission. Words are, after all, copyrighted, and protected by law in 158 sovereign states and by the international courts.

 

[StardogChampion]

If you're not on Google, you might aswell not be anywhere. They won't get half as many visits now.

All the news sites have to do is add a tiny line of code that'll stop their site being indexed anyway, so why do they moan?

 

[Beerdude26]

They're all French newssites? :|
(I'm Dutch, Belgium has a French part though)

 

[Solaris]

Thing is. These peoples words are being seen on a google server, so the companies lose web-ad money they would get if people visited there site instead of googles.

 

[kirovman]

Thing is. These peoples words are being seen on a google server, so the companies lose web-ad money they would get if people visited there site instead of googles.

They're like a local shop, they don't like outsiders.

 

[tehsolace]

I wouldn't like google indexing a novel that I wrote (if I wrote one) without my permission. It may be 'for the ease of reading', but you might as well say napster was 'for the ease of listening to music'.

 

[kirovman]

Yeah, but google's just linking to the articles at the original source.

If the music was available for download on the artist's website, then linking to that shouldn't be a problem either.

 

[hungryduck]

the belgians are basically shooting themselves in the foot.
Doesn't matter, they're only good for their waffles anyway.....

 

[Beerdude26]

the belgians are basically shooting themselves in the foot.
Doesn't matter, they're only good for their waffles anyway.....

/me feels left out ;(

EDIT: zomg wtf 7,000 posts :|

 

[Parrot of doom]

Yeah, but google's just linking to the articles at the original source.

If the music was available for download on the artist's website, then linking to that shouldn't be a problem either.

http://news.google.co.uk/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn&q=

Take a look at the Google news page. It clearly copies word for word the entries on the original pages. I'd call that copyright violation, and would say that Google is well out of order.

So again, good.

 

[Raeven0]

It clearly copies word for word the entries on the original pages. I'd call that copyright violation

I only see the first paragraph of selected articles, and links to the articles themselves. That's called fair use, and without it, the entire Politics forum would need to be arrested.

 

[Element Alpha]

Awesome, take a look:

http://www.google.be/

They put the ruling on the front page of their site! It's the first time I've seen the front page not empty (except for the google logo and searchbox of course). Almost every single belgian will see it. Looks like they're sticking their neck out or making some kind of statement.

 

[Parrot of doom]

I only see the first paragraph of selected articles, and links to the articles themselves. That's called fair use, and without it, the entire Politics forum would need to be arrested.

My understanding of 'fair use' is that it relates to reviewing and critisism of copyrighted works. What Google is doing is using that content to deliver advertising to the viewer. That advertising revenue goes to Google, and not to the originator of the linked articles.

Therefore it could hardly be termed 'fair use'. More like 'using other people's work to generate revenue'.

Your analogy of the politics forum is inaccurate, since advertising is not readily apparent in forum pages that contain links.

 

[Raeven0]

Google News doesn't have advertising on it.

Of course, it's just occurred to me that the original issue wasn't with Google News, but with the Google main site.

In that case, I could vaguely understand the media's problems with Google caching their pages, but suing just because ten words of your precious content are indexed is contrary to every reasonable neuron in my brain. Even considering the (infinitesimal) revenue generated in the process of displaying those ten words.

In either case, most major search engines--including Google--offer blindingly trivial opt-out measures for sites that don't want their content indexed.

 

[Element Alpha]

Why don't they use robots.txt (parameters are: index,no-cache)?

Why? Why?

Because they're dinosaurs. They don't have a clue when it comes to the new media. They've been stuck with paper prints for a century and hope to be able to continue for another one. I don't know about you guys but I read my news online.

Also, watch the movie in the OP if you haven't already: Epic 2015 (new updated version)

Also, if you didn't know, google doesn't show the entire articles on their news page. They only show the first phrase. Proof: http://news.google.be/

Now what? I shit trains mo'focker :frown: