The battle between traditional print press and the Internet is hotting up, with the former still fighting against the inevitable lurch to the Web. The latest twist is a group of Belgian newspapers suing Google for $77.5 million for being included in search results.

Most website owners and news sources see Google as a boon to business and fight to be included in search results. They also aim to be listed as highly as possible in search engine results in order to be noticed, and drive traffic to their site.

However, a bunch of Belgian newspapers, represented by publishers’ group Copiepresse have decided not only that hey don’t want to be listed on Google or Google News, but that they want damages for the fact they have been on the service in recent years.

This story isn’t a new one, but has been running from way back in April 2006 when Copiepresse first filed a lawsuit against Google for what it claimed was copyright law being violated by having articles published on Google News, and Web pages being cached.

Last February saw a Belgian court inexplicably rule in favour of the Belgian newspapers, and Google was ordered to remove articles belonging to the seventeen newspapers from its sites. But Google appealed, and negotiations were then opened between the two camps to try and work out a deal which pleases both sides.

Unfortunately, that perfect deal was never found, and due to the failure of compromise talks Copiepresse has now asked for Google to be summoned to court and answer the charges. The group also wants up to €49.2 million ($77.5 million) in damages for the copyright violations which it claims have taken place already.

According to InfoWorld, Margaret Boribon, secretary general at Copiepresse said:

“We entered in negotiations with Google to reach an agreement, but they have now failed. All we want is to reach a fair agreement with Google, but if that fails we will go on with every possible procedure,”

Google plans to fight the claims and vigorously challenge Copiepresse’s accusations of copyright violations. I personally find this whole thing completely bizarre, as like I said at the beginning of this article, Google listing is something which is craved by most, not fought and dragged through the courts.

This also shows up the traditional press for being incapable of seeing the benefit of having a Web presence and being able to utilise that presence to drive traffic and advertising revenue. There’ll come a day when these newspapers are begging Google for inclusion in News and search engine results, and I’d love to hear what Google says to that when the moment arrives.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 4:41 pm under Google, Internet, Legal, Opinion.

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