Oh no! We’re Idiots!
globeandmail.com: Google loses copyright case in Belgium — This is obviously because these folks do not want any extra traffic that Google provides. What dummies. And you wonder why newspapers are dying worldwide. It’s the clueless owners living in the 1800’s.
BRUSSELS — A court on Tuesday ruled in favour of Belgian newspapers that sued Google Inc., claiming that the Web search Internet search leader infringed copyright laws and demanded it remove their stories.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company that operates the world’s most-used search engine immediately said it would appeal, claiming its Google News service was “entirely legal.”
A Brussels court ruled in favour of Copiepresse, a copyright protection group representing 18 mostly French-language newspapers that complained the search engine’s “cached” links offered free access to archived articles that the papers usually sell on a subscription basis.
It ordered Google to remove any articles, photos or links from its sites — including Google News — that it displays without the newspapers’ permission.
What a bunch of morons! Instead of just disabling on their side the ability for Google to cache them, they go and spend all this time and money on suing Google? A 12 year old could have done that for them.
This reminds me of the guy who found that the Air Miles DB is accessible on/from their website, and instead of thanking him and giving him like a gazillion air miles, they went ahead and suited him!
Wold run my lawyers and morons. How did we ever get to where we are?
Correction, should be:
World run by lawyers and morons.
Sorry, was typing furiously in anger…
They haven’t heard of a firewall?
If I was google, I would ban those sites. I bet they wouldn’t like that either.
It’s useful to read the full linked article. The cache is perhaps a minor issue, compared with what Google News is doing. Also google setting itself up as a portal to Belgian news content. I don’t think this is purely a question of “scripting” or “robots configuration” as might appear at first reading.
Personally, as an internet user, I prefer not to have to pay for articles that I want to read. However, publishers have the right to the marketing strategy of their own choice. As it happens, the linked newspaper (in Canada) uses much the same strategy as the Belgian newspapers. I write a column for them, but you can never see more than the first couple of sentences. Wanna see more? Subscribe! And it’s expensive. Doesn’t make me happy, but that’s their choice, they pay me, and it is in the contract.
Nobody loses but these newspapers. Google excludes them and to the rest of the world they “disappear”. Good riddance.
However, publishers have the right to the marketing strategy of their own choice.
I could be mistaken, BUT I think the gist of the controversy is that they have resorted to a complicated/expensive legal solution to a problem where a technical solution would have been cheaper (free) and easier.
If you don’t want your office mates to take pencils out of your drawer, lock the drawer; don’t have them arrested.
there are/were choices for the newspaper that DIDNT require any/much money on their part…
Think about it…If a search engine can get past the front page and into the articles, Then ANYBODY can do it for free, and probably very easily. As easy as changing HTTP to FTTP…
I would be sueing the Site designer, NOT google.
#3 – This has nothing to do with firewalls.
#8 – FTTP? WTF? LOL There’s HTTP and FTP, but no such thing as FTTP. And FTP is not necessarily the way to get the information. They may not have a public FTP site set up. Google got to those “hidden” pages by following links somewhere on the site. That’s all a user would have to do.
The site design team should definitely be the focal point of this suit though. If they actually designed a subscription news site with no login verification, they deserve to be fired. Sadly, they were likely the ones who convinced the non-technical management and executives of the newspaper that it was Google’s fault and not theirs.
It takes about 30 seconds to add a tag to the HTML to prohibit Google from indexing your site anyway, and that’s if you have to look up the syntax… which a competent web designer should never have to do.
It’s been quite awhile since I had to think about it, but I think Google has a link somewhere on their site to request removal from their engine. I’m sure you’re never actually removed, but you should show up in searches anymore.
Err… “should NOT show up in searches anymore.”
Ehm…I think the problem wasn’t in the access to the new articles, but the caching of the old articles. Lots of newspapers charge for this service and it is not a minor technical issue the newspaper could have fixed on their part…
#11 is right – the Google cache doesn’t reside on the newspaper’s site, where their web gus could fix it as a user access problem. And I don’t think I’ve ever read that Google removes data from its systems, ever. It might be a sticky problem for Google to separate out the specific pay-to-view cached material, once it has aged past the first day’s free access, and attach a “do not tread here” tag to it.
I bet there’s a technical discussion of this sort of problem somewhere, but I didn’t find one when I went looking just now.
Ladies and gentlemen, here’s an excerpt from a dead language:
Bonjour monsieur.
#12, Thank TJ. That adds a whole new understanding to the whole discussion.
Honorable mention to #11 too.
So now the question is, if I take a picture, a snapshot if you will, of you with the crack of your butt showing, should I now have to get rid of that picture if you pull up your pants?
In retaliation, Google should block this site completely. No search results, no sponsered links, no nothing. Then watch them complain when traffic to their site drops off, and only their competitiors’ newspapers show up in Google search results. Leave ’em to suffer the consequences of their actions, and get exactly what they sued for!