I do not understand this at all:
A Brussels court ruled Tuesday that Google had violated copyright laws by publishing links to articles from Belgian newspapers without permission. Legal experts said the case could have broad implications in Europe for the news indexes provided by search engines.
…
The Brussels court ruled that Google, which operates the dominant Internet search engine, must pay 25,000 euros, or $32,600, for each day it displayed content from the plaintiff publications in violation of copyright. The court scaled back a September ruling that called for damages of up to 1 million euros a day and required Google to publish the judgment on its home page.
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Some newspaper representatives hailed the ruling. “Today was a victory for copyright protection,” said Larry Kilman, a spokesman in Paris for the World Association of Newspapers. “Search engines cannot unilaterally decide what happens to content.”
Why would a newspaper be indignant, and demand compensation, for directing readers to their websites? Shouldn’t they be grateful, and even be willing to pay Google for such linkage — a sort of dot.com payola arrangement, as many online merchants do?
Keep in mind that Google News does not archive (i.e., steal) entire articles — just links and in some cases very brief excerpts. It’s not like, e.g., Lexis-Nexis. Google News is only useful if one actually clicks through to the web page — complete with banner ads, pop-ups, cookie implants, etc. Which is, one would think, exactly what publishers want.
Would I, for instance, read stories from the Kansas City Cornhick, or the Salt Lake City Tabernacle, if I didn’t find them from Google or some other search engine? And would you, but for following a link from my blog or some other third-party source?
More visitors means greater attractiveness to advertisers, which means more ka-ching to publishers. And they want to punish Google for this? I am completely dumbfounded.
What am I missing — besides the fact that Europeans are involved?
One last observation: It only takes one simple line of HTML code to instruct search engines (e.g., regular Google) to ignore a web page for indexing purposes — or does that not apply to Google News? If it does, then I repeat — what exactly is the issue here?
Any thoughts?
(Via Slashdot.)
6 responses so far ↓
Link doinkicarus // Feb 14, 2007 at 11:28 am
I read that article yesterday – I just figured I was missing something.
Glad to see others are as dumbfounded as I am.
Link Dave // Feb 14, 2007 at 12:28 pm
The issue is that the law and reality are, as often is the case, at odds?
More generally, cynically: just because a person or an entity has a legal right to be exercised or protected doesn't mean that the exercise or protection of that right is the correct thing to do. This, of course, is anathema to the lawyers that counsel companies.
But it makes for easy pickings for bloggers.
Link Zach // Feb 14, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I've read your blog for a few months now, and I really like it. But if you're going to insult those of us from Kansas City, at least do it on something provable, like the Kansas side habitually reelecting Sam Brownback, or passing a bigot amendment with a 70% majority, or the Missouri side pouring $10k/pupil into the Kansas City, Missouri school district and still having it produce some of the lowest test scores in the nation.
I've spent 90% of my life in KC. The only farm animal I've ever been close enough to touch is a horse, and that was during a family vacation in Hawaii. The only cornfields I've ever seen have been from inside a car driving on a highway (outside of the city, I might add).
We're certainly not the culture center that New York is, but we're hardly the toothless, tobacco spittin', redneck corn farmers you make us out to be.
Link KipEsquire // Feb 14, 2007 at 3:05 pm
My penchant for using Kansas City (Kansas, not Missouri) and Salt Lake City as hypotheticals is an inside joke and is not intended to raise hackles.
P.S. You left out the Matthew Limon travesty.
Link Jason Briggeman // Feb 14, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Isn't it obvious that if you bring suit for $1 million or even $30,000 per day in damages and you win, that you do quite a bit better than if you get a few extra clicks on some articles?
Link Allan Beatty // Feb 17, 2007 at 10:56 am
It's the same old lazy entitlement "do it for me" mentality we see all over the place these days. Another internet-related example was the deep-linking case. In both cases, a publisher wanted their web site to work differently than web sites normally do, but were too ignorant or lazy to work out how to make it happen themselves, so they turned to the courts to make it everyone else's problem.