Belgian Publishers Want $77.5 Million Damages From Google

[mwasiqansari]

A group of Belgian newspaper publishers wants Google to pay up to €49.2 million (US$77.5 million) in damages for violating copyright law by publishing their articles on Google News and caching their web pages.

It made the claim in a court summons served last week, and made public on Wednesday. The Belgian publishers' group Copiepresse first filed suit over the Google News service in April 2006.

"We entered in negotiations with Google to reach an agreement, but they have now failed," said Margaret Boribon, secretary general at Copiepresse.

Belgian Publishers Want $77.5 Million Damages From Google

[NashTax]

Wow that's a lot of cash but not much to Google maybe?

Thanks for the heads up. I'll be passing this on.

[chantal kandu bambi]

good start

More is comming ....

[Sohan]

Originally Posted by chantal kandu bambi

good start

More is comming ....

Good on them, google need some power removing! Other wise we will get a big brother google. For example, their new health service!

[MindBlogger]

This is just madness... They want Google to pay because Google actually care to syndicate their content on Google? Why don't they just sue Google for indexing their site also?

[Sjorritsma]

Old media vs New Media

[chantal kandu bambi]

This is just madness... They want Google to pay because Google actually care to syndicate their content on Google? Why don't they just sue Google for indexing their site also?

that will be the next step

Europe goverment is working on something very nasty for google...

Hopefully in future they can only index websites who are giving permition... without permition --> no indexing...

[kellyifrah]

If you don't want something to be common knowledge you should not put it on the internet

[farrhad]

Originally Posted by MindBlogger

This is just madness... They want Google to pay because Google actually care to syndicate their content on Google? Why don't they just sue Google for indexing their site also?

hahaha You are right

Originally Posted by kellyifrah

If you don't want something to be common knowledge you should not put it on the internet

Agreed. And news is something that is meant to be shared......

[slihta]

google runs over anyone

[guidyy]

The whole story is different:
Copiepresse wants money because Google cached pages that were supposed to be "for members only"
They should sue their own web team instead. Ever heard of "noindex nocache" ? Hysterically, they want to look at google's log from 2001 to see how many hit they got on their cached pages.
I would send them an hard copy of the logs...

[ckgni]

Is this a new way of making money online or what?

- Creating a web site
- Publishing content on your site
- Letting Google to index the content
- Seeing that the site content does not earn any money because it is crap
- Playing the victim and asking Google to pay because it indexed the content

Doh... if they didn't want Google to index their site, they could just use a robots.txt file or block Googlebot from Apache using .htaccess

Who else here will bet that they will get a super shiny great amount of 0$ from this lawsuit?

[chopsticks]

If the content was for members only then why wasn't it protected right?

If it was protected correctly from non members then google would not of been able find and index the content...

[cool_78]

This is just a way for them to extort money from Google.

[chantal kandu bambi]

Ever heard of "noindex nocache"

well, thats the hole point about it

at those pages there was no : 'index, cache' so they never give them permision to grab and publish everything.

Its not because a door is open, you can walk in and take everything...
If you want to take something, you need permition in some way (letter, metatags (index cache),...)
When there is nothing, you don't have permition.

Google is not God, who can do whatever he wants...

Who else here will bet that they will get a super shiny great amount of 0$ from this lawsuit?

I wouldn't be sure about that

[guidyy]

we can debate forever on this, and I'm really curious about what a judge will say.
Since the whole internet is based on hyperlinks and searches for specific information, I would say that if I publish something on the internet is for people to find it.
If I want some money for some specific content, well that's another story: I need to protect those pages at my best and tell the crawlers to stay away from that content.
Now they are trying to hit the big daddy: but what about all those crappy harverster bots not obeying robots.txt and metas? Do you have any idea of where your content goes? Wouldn't you protect from them?
IMHO the Belgians will loose big time, but I still think i can close a deal with an handshake, so I might be wrong.

[cicero]

Wow.. I think they get some psychological ( damn the spelling) high suing huge corporations. I would personally love to sue Microsoft. *waits for opportunity*

[jameskertley1]

Wow that's a lot of cash but not much to Google maybe?

I also want to try somethink like that.....

[chopsticks]

It'd be good to get paid for that, definetely. But thinking of something as such and going through with it will only get you shamed for failing when you try and sue. Plus on top of that getting banned sites, usage probably, etc...

Don't want it found? Protect it in a smart manner or don't upload. Don't blame the automated bots finding the stuff.

[godsofchaos]

Booo! Why do they publish news then if people cant really get a hold of it. Google helped them, and they are backstabbin G