NYT: A court ordered Google to remove on Monday all links to French- and German-language newspaper reports published in Belgium after an association of local publishers won a case that accused the company of violating the country’s copyright laws.
The legal action is the most recent example of the news media’s challenging the growing power of internet news portals run by the large search engines. Increasingly, people are obtaining their news in bite-size nuggets on search engines, and advertising revenue for newspapers is diminishing as a result.
Copiepresse, an organisation that helps enforce the copyrights of some of Belgium’s best-known newspapers, including Le Soir and Le Libre Belgique, sued Google for publishing summaries of articles in the newspapers along with a link to the web sites of the newspapers.
In the meantime, there are no results of the newspapers any more in Google. Sweet revenge?
Paul Aelen
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