UK Decides Against Copyright Extension -- Pity The Poor Musician Who Can't Live Off His Work From 1955 Any More

Google Settles Part Of Belgian Lawsuit -- Many Questions Left Unanswered

from the keeping-quiet dept

Mon, Nov 27th 2006 12:20am — Mike Masnick

On Friday, Google was back in court fighting the ridiculous ruling written by a judge that confused Google and Google News (repeatedly referring to Google's cache as if it were a part of Google News, when it is not) which banned Google from linking to French and German language Belgian newspaper websites. Following all the publicity from the case, some others, such as Belgian photographers jumped on the bandwagon asking Google not to send them traffic. However, over the weekend, the news broke that Google has settled with two of the five groups that were suing it -- but the details are left out. That has many people speculating over whether or not Google paid up. Alternatively, it's possible that someone from Google sat these people down, explained to them how the internet works, and why it's a damn good thing when the world's most popular search engine is driving lots of traffic your way (or perhaps, they just pointed out how damaging it is for Google to stop linking to them). However, if it does later come out that Google somehow paid up to settle this dispute, it will open them up to tremendous problems, as publishers of all types will suddenly start demanding their cut as well. The folks at Google know all of this, so it would be quite a surprise if they did pay up.

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11 Comments

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Paulo, 27 Nov 2006 @ 2:45am

Should they not be clear about this then?
Then, why don't they just go public will all this. As far as I can see, if it remains secret, then they payed up.
I'm next in line, thank you!
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Panaqqa, 27 Nov 2006 @ 4:14am

As me, Google should have just delisted Belgium...
After all, who's going to miss it if Belgium just suddenly vanishes from all Google search results (except maybe some Belgians)? Then shut down google.be, close all gmail accounts that used a Belgian email address for signup, and block IPs from Belgian from google.com.

Bingo. Effective removal of one troublesome small country from all future interferences with Google's business.
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ScaredOfTheMan, 27 Nov 2006 @ 5:13am

Booooo on google....Instead of drawing a line in the sand and saying "no, money for you" it *may* have simply paid up.

The scary part to me, is the trend, maybe its in google's best interest to pay them. That way no search start up will ever have a proper index of sites as they will have to pay for some of them.

They should have held the line and pulled everything from the index and watched them suffer.
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Prometheum, 27 Nov 2006 @ 5:42am

Its alot more profitable for google to pay off some people and retain a hold in even one more country then pull that and piss off most of europe. If they had pulled, it would've looked like angry americans getting pissed that they can't do what belgium apparently thinks is illegitimate and disadvantaging the people of belgium instead of just fixing their problem. You have to admit, if google paid them off, everyone wins.
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mousepaw, 27 Nov 2006 @ 5:53am

Why?
Okay, what have I missed? Do we know WHY these guys want off Google? Why talk about a cure when the disease hasn't been established?
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Matthew, 27 Nov 2006 @ 5:59am

Stupid motto
"Do no evil" should be altered slightly to

"Do no evil, and suffer no fool"

sarcasm
These people eat waffles as dessert and clearly cannot be trusted with the Internet.
/sarcasm

Seems to me that Google is doing all the work to make the Internet more useful and adding content and everyone can only think in get-paid-now terms. Perhaps that's understandable, but Google is building a better road to your site so shouldn't you be building a better site?
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Starky, 27 Nov 2006 @ 7:38am

robots.txt
Why don't they just use robots.txt to tell the engine not to search their site? Wouldn't that be a lot easier and cheaper than a lawsuit? Or would that not work with Google News for some reason?
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itanshi, 27 Nov 2006 @ 8:02am

now this is true capitalism
and this is why people want to be communists. profit now, not later. kill the goose for a couple eggs now and never get them again later. Dude, people, plan your retirement, not your vacation.
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Beans for Breakfast, 27 Nov 2006 @ 11:57am

Re: As me, Google should have just delisted Belgiu
Yes, but they do have good beer there, so the country's not a total waste.
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Beans for Breakfast, 27 Nov 2006 @ 12:02pm

Re: robots.txt
Of course, but they are clearly so ingnorant of how this fancy web thing works that they would never understand. "Robot? We don't have any robots."
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hanzie, 28 Nov 2006 @ 9:23am

Belgian SCAM. Seriously.
I know this story didn't need more ridicule, but one of the two societies that settled with Google is the Société Civile des Auteurs Multimedia, abbreviated SCAM. As a Belgian, I wish to God I was making this up.

Yes, ICT industry execs, invest in Belgium, where you'll find your trusty collective copyright management contact at www.scam.be
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