Google to appeal, as Belgian court rules news site is illegal

Internet giant Google said yesterday it would appeal against a Belgian court ruling that threatens to undermine the rationale behind its hugely popular global network of news sites. The court ruled that Google was breaking the law by including headlines and links to online stories from the Belgian press in its Google News service. The case was brought by Copiepress, an organisation that manages copyright for the French and German-speaking Belgian press, including La Derni’re Heure, La Libre Belgique and Le Soir. In its judgment, details of which only emerged yesterday despite being originally issued on September 5, the court said Google would be liable for a fine of EUR 1m for every day it did not remove the offending content from the recently-launched Belgian site. Google, which said it only learned of the judgment last Friday, confirmed that it had removed any links on its Belgian site pointing to the newspapers concerned, and was in the process of removing them from all its global sites. (Media Guardian,September 19, 2006)

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