September 25, 2006

Google has apparently lost a bid in overturning a Belgian court order that requires it to publish an earlier ruling forbidding it from reproducing article snippets on its news aggregation service.

As a result, Google faces a fine of 500,000 euros (336,400 pounds) per day for not posting the Sep. 5 decision on its Belgian search engine.

It said on Friday it still refuses to post the ruling. "We are very disappointed that the court has decided to uphold its decision that the original judgement be posted to Google.be and news.google.be," a Google spokesperson said.

In the past, Google had argued that the posting was unnecessary given the widespread publicity of the case.

Google wants to fight the decision again as part of a broader attempt to overturn the entire case. The Belgium court is expected to consider the appeal again in November.

"We believe that Google News is entirely lawful and brings real benefits to publishers by driving web traffic and more users to their sites," the spokesperson said.

Google News lists headlines and a few sentences of text from news articles around the world and links back to a publication's own Web site for users to read the whole item.

Any publisher can opt out by asking Google to remove its content, but publishers argue that by reproducing the material in the first place, Google is violating copyright laws.

Separately, four international publishing trade groups unveiled plans to launch an automated system for granting search engines and other companies permission for using their content.

The Belgian case was brought by Copiepresse, an organisation that manages copyrights for French and German language newspapers.

Source: Reuters