Google/Belgium publishers in court today

Posted by Allie Judson on November 24, 2006 at 1:37 PM

 
Today Google is set to appear in a Belgium court to defend itself against allegations from local newspapers that the company stole content from their web sites.  In an earlier ruling the court based in Brussels ordered Google to remove Belgian-French language content from its news index with a penalty of €1 million a day fines for not complying.

Since the first case, Google been under fire by Copiepress, a French language copyright protection group who claims that the company didn’t comply with the removal ruling.  

"We're glad to have the opportunity to argue the substance," Google spokeswoman Jessica Powell said. "We think that search engines are a real benefit to publishers and drive valuable traffic to their Web sites."

According to Powell, newspapers are able to remove their sites from Google’s scan.  However some wonder what would come of the web if engines like Google weren’t allowed to scan sites, "If content isn't indexed, it can't be searched. And if it can't be searched, how can it be found?" asked David Eun, Google vice president for content partnerships. "Imagine a library with no index of titles or subjects of the books on its shelves, or no catalogue of the authors who wrote them."

Source: CNN, Itworld.com

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