Belgian courts give Google a bloody nose
California-based internet giant Google may have to rethink its popular news.google.com service after Belgian courts on Tuesday (13 February) said it is illegal to publish summaries of news stories and links without newspapers' consent.
"We confirm...the reproduction and publication of headlines as well as short extracts and the use of Google's cache, the publicly available data storage of articles and documents, violate the law on authors' rights," the ruling stated, AP reports.
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The verdict will see Google fined €25,000 a day until the content is removed as well as 139 days' of back-fines, with other copyright owners in future being able to complain by email and demand to have their content taken down within 24 hours.
The case was brought by a group of 18 newspapers including Belgium's Le Soir and La Derniere Heure. Google in 2006 delayed a Danish news service for similar reasons and also faced legal complaints from Agence France Presse in 2005.
"We only ever show the headlines and a few snippets of text and small thumbnail images. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper's web site," Google said in a statement on Tuesday.
US analysts Sterling Market Intelligence say the Belgian decision could see other European newspapers threaten litigation in order to squeeze money from Google, which generates income based on the number of people it can attract to its service.
"Google is very fearful to open the floodgates to other parties asking for money and this decision may do that across the EU," the firm's Greg Sterling told Bloomberg in the run-up to the court decision.
"It's something which we are looking into with great interest," a European Commission spokesman said on the implications of the ruling for the EU single market.
The EU institutions themselves produce daily press reviews with news snippets for internal staff.