Google News

Google Asked to Pay $77 Million for Publishing News without Permission

CopiePresse sues the Mountain View-based giant

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

28th of May 2008, 10:42 GMT

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Google also provides a Belgian version of Google News

The Mountain View-based company Google is, once again, sent to court for copyright infringement, being accused by the copyright organization CopiePresse that

it has published news belonging to Belgian newspapers without authorization. The copyright group demanded damages of $77 million due to the fact that Google posted on Google News stories written by Le Soir and La Libre Belgique, eFluxMedia reported. Google didn't comment the case, explaining that court documents had not been received by its officials, the same source added.

A similar case took place last year when Google was accused of copyright infringement by CopiePresse because topics published by Belgian newspapers were posted on Google News. Although Google explained that Google News only provides the title of the news story along with a summary and that its service is actually a great source of traffic, a judge ruled that the Mountain View company should stop gathering news from CopiePresse's members.

At the time of the lawsuit, CopiePresse said that it wanted its news removed from Google's product because the service provided them for free while the Belgian newspapers group planned to sell them online. And, according to Reuters, the copyright group said a few days ago that Google had infringed this ruling and seeks for damages.

But what's interesting is that CopiePresse wants even more than financial damages. According to eFluxMedia, the copyright organization required Google to publish the court ruling on the official Google.be website as well as on the Google News page available at news.google.be for 20 days. In case the Mountain View-company doesn't do so, it may have to pay 1 million euros per day, as requested by CopiePresse.

Reuters reports that Google has already appealed the initial court ruling, but the company has also tried to reach an agreement with the Belgian copyright group.

TAGS:

google | google news | copyright | copiepresse | belgium

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