Google defeated in Belgian copyright case; everyone but Google loses

The group of disgruntled newspapers in Belgium that sued Google for copyright infringement has emerged victorious after a decision was granted in their favor today in court. The judgment echoes a previous ruling from the Court of First Instance in Brussels that found Google in violation of copyright law when the company published extracts of articles from Belgian newspaper publishers.

Copiepresse, the Belgium copyright group representing the nearly 20 papers scandalized by Google News, now gets its wish: Google News may no longer link to the news resources in question nor cache any of their materials for use in Google News. Google was fined €25,000 for each day it violated the copyrights of the victorious party, which will amount to a €3.5 million payday. The fines were reduced from an earlier penalty of €1 million per day.

The drama began a year ago when Copiepresse's member companies complained bitterly about the free linkage being doled out to them via Google News. While most news sites jump at the chance to be included in Google News, these publications were aghast. A major reason for their unhappiness was the fact that Google News conflicted with their business model: the papers were in the habit of charging for content after it had been up for a set period of time, but Google News would show you cached copies. That wasn't the central issue, however.

The newspapers also vigorously argued that Google should not reproduce their content in any way without their explicit consent. They actually resented the fact that Google News might direct readers to their content, because they feared that a search engine might do what it is designed to do: get people what they want the first time. Copiepresse's member companies would prefer that you hit their home pages and wander around aimlessly instead. No, I'm not joking.

Google plans to challenge the ruling. "We believe that Google News is entirely legal," Google said in a prepared statement. "We only ever show the headlines and a few snippets of text and small thumbnail images. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper's Web site."

I'm feeling luck^h^h^h^h like you owe me a lot of money

This entire debacle was ultimately about advertising revenue, as so many of these disputes are. Copiepresse wanted in on the game, so to speak, and demanded a cut of Google's advertising revenue as pay for Google's inclusion of their materials in its master index and in Google News. Google balked, because to do so would mean the company could theoretically end up owing everyone who has ever published something online a cut of the pie.

Today's ruling requires Google to accept copyright infringement notifications from copyright holders via email, and Google will have 24 hours to deal with any claim of infringement before being fined €1,000 per day. It's not exactly what Copiepresse wanted (essentially a paid opt-in deal), but it puts the power firmly in the hands of copyright holders to determine what gets indexed. Of course, these same copyright holders had this power all the while in the form of a little something known as a robots.txt file, but they apparently refused to use it. Their collective argument against taking responsibility for how search engines indexed their content was that doing so made Google a de facto copyright rulemaker.

The case is significant for Europe because it could end up affecting search engine policy across the board. A European Commission spokesperson has said that the EC will consider revisiting copyright law as a result of the decision, according to IDG. It is hard to know which way the EC might lean, but if the EC sides with the spirit of this ruling, it could be bad news for search engines and for Internet users in general. The idea that any copyright holder should be paid for the inclusion of their materials—which they've published freely online—in a search index runs counter to established practice.

Google will be just fine, regardless. In most other regions of the world, publications are happy to be included in Google News. In fact, some even pay Search Engine Optimizers big money to "optimize" their search results. When copyright holders back out of search indexes, the only people that lose are the general public and the copyright holders themselves.

In the meantime, we expect Copiepresse to continue their quest against Yahoo and MSN. Maybe if they're lucky, no one will link to them ever again, and they can live in the obscurity that they apparently believe they should be paid to leave.