Belgian newspapers have succeeded in their in bid to stop Google from displaying their headlines and links to articles on its popular Google News service.

A group of 17 newspapers, calling themselves Copiepresse, took Google to court because the search engine offered cached links to archived, older articles that the newspapers usually sold.

The Brussels Court of First Instance decided against Google, stating that the company could not rely on copyright exemptions, such as “fair use”, because displaying a headline, a few lines of text, a link, and possibly a photo, did not constitute a review.

The court stated: “Google is reproducing and publishing works protected by copyright. Google cannot call on any exceptions set out by law relating to copyright or similar rights.”

Google has already said that it will appeal the decision, and that the decision will not affect other jurisdictions. Copiepresse, on the other hand, is saying that the ruling conforms to European Union law, and that this case could trigger cases in other countries. Copiepresse has already been in touch with copyright groups in Norway, Austria, and Italy.

Google stopped displaying headlines and links from the newspapers involved on news. google.be September after Copiepresse obtained a court order. However, Copiepresse claims that news.google.com is not complying fully with the ruling. If that is the case, Google may be up for fines of up to $4.3 million.

Copiepresse is in talks with Yahoo and MSN over copyright.

This would have to be one of the most insane court cases ever; Google News drives traffic to news sites, at no charge. Why on Earth would any media company not extra traffic.

Sure the newspaper companies claim that they sell archived versions of the older articles, that can be found for free on Google’s cache, but the revenues for those sales are going to be tiny, and could not possibly out weight the benefit of the exposure the media sites gain by being featured on Google News.

This is clearly an example of where the old media is trying to cling to outdated notions of how to manage content.

One thing the Belgium newspapers should have learnt by now is that the online business is all about traffic; something that Google News was delivering to them for free.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 2:08 pm under Apple, Google, Technology.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
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