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Belgian Publishers Trying To Milk Google Ban For All It's Worth
from the oh,-come-on... dept
The situation with Google in Belgium continues to get more and more surreal. Following the original confused order for Google to stop linking to French and German-language news publications on its Belgian site, Google complied, but appealed. They also appealed the idea that they should have to reprint the entire court order ("without commentary") on the front of both Google Belgium and Google News Belgium. However, when the court rejected that appeal and started threatening fines, Google put the text on the site, in tiny, unformatted text at the bottom of each page. Now, wouldn't you know it, the publishers are whining that it was too small and too hidden on the news site. Of course, the court never said they had to make it prominent or put it at the top of the page. In the meantime, though, it seems like others are looking to jump on the bandwagon as well. The latest is that Belgian press photographers are joining the lawsuit against Google, just for the hell of it. It's not entirely clear what their complaint is, as the article continues to show that many people involved in the case don't seem to actually understand what's going on. The article (presumably based on info from the press photographers) continues to say that Google caches the stories on its Google News site, when that's simply not true. The article also says that Google has claimed removing these sites from the cache is "technically impossible," which isn't true (it both isn't technically impossible and Google never said that removing these sites was technically impossible). Either way, it's not at all clear what the photographers are complaining about. In some cases, Google does use thumbnails, but that is pretty clear fair use (then again, we thought what Google News was doing was fair use too).
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Reader Comments (rss)
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get off the internet
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Re: get off the internet
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Perhaps...
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Begium Google...
Their still mad that English won out as the world-wide language of choice.
That's why the french came up with the metric system, it's a french plot to undermine the english speaking world...
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It's quite clear...
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Drop 'em
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Re: Begium Google...
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just drop google.be if they dont like your help
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Re: Begium Google...
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We're not all that stupid
Incidently it is the French press that started this ridiculous lawsuit against Google, and we're not too proud about them either. The whole thing is indeed a blatant show of ignorance about how the web -and Google- works, both on the pubisher's and the judge's side.
Drop the publishers' sites from the Google index? I agree completely! Drop Belgium "off the Internet"? That's a bit harsh...
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Re: Drop 'em
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Re: We're not all that stupid
damn, wouldnt that suck?!
oh... wait...
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Re: Begium Google...
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Editors take note
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It would be a funny backlash when students/teachers/intelligent people begin to knock down the doors of these companies/people.
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Important insight
Belch.
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Re: Editors take note
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Re: Re: Editors take note
Take it from a grammar nerd.
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Re: Important insight
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Re: Editors take note
Huh?...
Sorry folks, I just can't let this one go.
Back to grammar School with you #15.
"Belgian Publishers Trying To Milk Google Ban For All It's Worth"
See, the "Publishers" are possessing the "Ban" for all "It is Worth"
I am done. Thank you.
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Re: Begium Google...
Anyway, Google is way ahead of the belgian times. In five to ten years, they're going to figure out how freakin' dumb they are.
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Woohoo my country is popular!
Wait? They just made an ass out of themselves.
I appreciate the knowledge and breadth of culture displayed in the other comments though. Good call about the waffles!
More seriously, I thought this kind of crap was tried by the French as well but went nowhere. In any case, it's showing alot of ignorance both from the publishers and the judge. The rest of the world want only one thing: getting picked up by google, being indexed, showing up in the result. This is sure way to attract alot of traffic.
This is especially true for the news media. When I use google news, I'm often sent to australian, south african, brazilian (but not belgian :) news sites.
Somebody let them know that Google actually increases traffic to their site.
Not all Belgian people are idiots. I can't say anything about the ones who make the news...
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deny from .be
allow from all
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The first thing I think of when I think of Belgium is their excelent imported Chocolates!!!
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Ban Belgium!
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Belgium
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this has gone on long enough
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Homer, YOU ROCK.
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the future of history (of the present)
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I declare war!
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No Belgium, No WWW
Oh and google hasn't been saving up on lawsuits themselves. They've been feverishly trying to get some localised versions (in the local dialects) to stop.
And for the sake of it, off course it's a bit strange of this guys not wanting to be linked, but hey, it's a free country over here. And google isn't all that either. I often use other searchmethods, because google just plain sucks say 40% of the time.
Dank u voor uw waandacht.
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Re: Re: Begium Google...
We're the most backwards country in Europe, and i love it.
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