New Article - Are Search Engine Spiders Infringing on Copyright? Belgium Speaks Out

[thejenn]

Authored by: Ross Dunn

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/dun.../0922_rd1.html

A Snippet:

Last Friday (Sept 15th) a Belgium court dealt a stunning blow against Google and its Google News search service. The court is now forbidding the popular search engine from indexing Belgian newspaper content without paying each newspaper for the use of their content.

[ehrenpreis]

Are these people crazy? WHile the rest of us would donate a lung to get to the top at Google, newspapers, driven and paid by advertisers for eyeballs, sue and get removed?

Sometimes I think I live in a world gone mad...er, wait, I do!

[torka]

Yeah, Google's response to something like that is simple enough. Just don't index their content. Problem solved.

--Torka

[Kelvin]

Hi to All!,
Great spot, what are we thinking? Do we want all our "content" to be available at a third party site that others who wants to seek our information goes to the third party site instead of to ours?

As far as my reading goes, Google did not challenge the case - hence the precedent is not good. But the case against Google rest on both copyright and database right, the latter of which is a "sui generis" right conferred to electronically formatted datas that have been systematically assembled for that purpose. And database right applies, as far as I know, only in the European Union. There were various attempts to introduce a similar instrument at various Congresses in the United States but it either failed or has been relegated to various study committees, and I believe awaiting "revival". Such a law in the United States would surely see an immediate rise in legal suits against anyone who aggregates content without permission (and royalties).

All commercial entities are profit entities. If my reading was correct, one of the main complaintss by the Belgian collective agency was that "cache" copies of news/information, that were already taken down by members of the Belgian Collective, can still be found at Google. And if that is correct, this potentially conflict with at least 2 directives of the European Union (Copyright and the Database Directive(s))

The laws of copyright is balanced by the doctrine of "fair use" in the public interest. Both these aspect must be followed to enable rights to be enjoyed and fruits of that labor for all to share. If we allow that to be tilted, in the medium to long term, nobody wins. And I think the most important thing to guard our due rights and fruits of labor, is to ensure that no one entity becomes too powerful. Right?