13February
The world's largest advertising broker cannot steal content, ruled a Belgian court to-day. G****e, the evil information behemoth, has been found guilty of breaching the copyright of seventeen Belgian newspapers, and has imposed fines of €35 million. Under the ruling, the brokery must remove copyrighted content within 24 hours of being notified by email, or face a fine of €25,000 per article per day.
Copiepresse, the francophone newspaper collective that beat the behemoth, has said that it's happy to negotiate a mutually-agreeable settlement. Never knowing when they're flogging a dead horse, G****e has entered an appeal against to-day's judgement. This decision corresponds to the Napoleonic Code right to own information, and will pertain to ongoing actions in Austria and Italy.
The court found that en reproduisant sur son site G****e News des titres d'articles et de courts extraits d'articles, Google reproduit et communique au public des oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur and à tort que Google estime pouvoir se prévaloir de l'accord des éditeurs de site.
The court also criticised G****e's cache of articles; Le Soir
pointed out that it stuffs old news behind a paywall, but the articles are available free and for nothing through the pirates. The court ruled, la pratique de Google consistant à enregistrer dans sa mémoire dite cache des oeuvres protégées par les droits d'auteur et à permettre aux internautes d'y accéder au sein-même de la dite-mémoire représente un acte de reproduction et de communication au public".
As ever, the dunderheads on Slashdot were last with the news, fully six hours behind the ruling. In less than half an hour, the thread had been derailed by a contribution from Dave Giggler of Leuven. Incidentally, is it just us, or should the Slashdot logo have a red dot in the top-right quadrant?
