By Jan Libbenga for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
The Copiepress group, which includes La Derniére
Heure, La Libre Belgique, and Le
Soir, is demanding Yahoo! stops publishing articles from
Belgian newspapers without prior authorisation, AFP reports.
Last year, Copiepress took Google to court to stop it
reproducing content from the French and German language Belgian
papers. The publisher successfully argued that Google News Belgium
infringed its copyright by republishing snippets of its
newspapers.
Facing a fine of €500,000 a day, Google removed all links from
its Google News Search service. Meanwhile, the search engine has
appealed the decision and a verdict is expected by the end of the
month.
So far, newspapers in the Flemish part of Belgium haven't joined
their collegues in Wallonia.
Copiepresse accuses Yahoo! of violating copyright laws by giving
internet users access to archived newspaper articles. The Belgian
newspapers have also asked Microsoft to stop the unauthorised
publishing of articles and it too agreed to remove all links to
articles in Belgian newspapers from its search engines and news
aggregators.
But, Microsoft underlined that these measures do not imply any
acknowledgement or recognition of Copiepresse's rights.
© The Register
2007
