A Belgian court ruled that Google News violates copyright laws by linking to articles without owners’ consent.
A Brussels court has ruled in favour of a group of Belgian newspapers which argued that the site, which lists links to news stories from around the world, used material without their consent, and ordered that the articles be taken down.
The case, which was brought by Copiepresse, a group representing 17 French and German language newspapers, including La Libre Belgique and Le Soir, may set a precedent for other newspapers in Europe, lawyers said.
Google News at most displays the headlines, a few words, and a thumbnail photograph, so if user want to continue reading they must click the links that take them to original content owner’s site. My first assumption is that news providers would welcome the clickthroughs that result from Google’s aggregator, or at least accept that this is the nature of information on the web. This case is certainly a challenge to that line of thinking. Perhaps the Belgian news providers argue that in an age when people may be more likely to just glance at headlines (guilty as charged) Google hurts their business in the long run. Google archives over 4500 sources for its news service, so I can’t imagine this really affects their business all that much, but it could set a precedent for future litigation.
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