your taking 2 very different contexts. One is where you have a search engine, that ranks based on relivance of all material on the internet, vs one dedciated to just news, which ranks on time as well as relivance. Google is being ignorant of how advertising on a news paper site works vs one on a blog or forum or any other site. Pierce
Thanks Mistermix. Couldn't remember the name!! From: http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/live/articles/newsletter-186.asp The past week has seen its fair share of controversy, with search engines broadening their reach and, occasionally, getting tied up in legal knots. Google found out the hard way that the Belgians like a legal battle better than most as they found themselves on the losing end of a lawsuit brought by Copiepresse on behalf of French and German speaking daily press organisations. The lawsuit has, despite being found in favour of Copiepresse, been seen as a bit of an own goal since the papers in question can look forwards to significantly less traffic from services such as Google News and other associated sites. The result of less traffic for newspapers? Less advertising revenue. Seems the telegraph could be on the same road and win. As for companies simply opting out the law has always stated that it is illegal to 'selll something first and then allow an opt out'. Which is why its illegal to deduct money from someones bank account and then say 'oh, but you can opt out if you don't like it!!'. using an opt out claus as defence IMO is a sure way to the big G loosing this case. remember this is about the NEWS service breaching copyright (and it is, no matter what amount of content it takes from the telegraph and its irrelevant about the traffic Google drives there.It could be one click or 10m. The telegraph is under no obligation to accept that traffic as some kind of 'payment' for having their copyright breached) NOT a search engine indexing the web.
In case of news, the most important part of a news story is its title. Google News and other syndication services copy the title and that is important. I think the newspaper publishers are pissed off, because for many people they are not any more the news source, Google News is, because that's where people find the news. The newspaper publishers are paying reporters money to produce stories. Then they put them together and sell the product. Google News or other syndication services are not paying money to anyone and yet they have all the news. I would not like it either. It is funny how content scrapping works, you just have to be big enough ;-).