BELGIAN NEWSPAPER GROUP SUES GOOGLE OVER COPYRIGHTS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BRUSSELS 000790

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/UBI and EEB/TPP/IPE
COMMERCE FOR USPTO

TAGS: EINT KIPR BE
SUBJECT: BELGIAN NEWSPAPER GROUP SUES GOOGLE OVER COPYRIGHTS


1. (U) SUMMARY. On February 13, a Belgian court upheld an
earlier ruling against Google in a copyright dispute over
news article headlines, excerpts, and links on its Google
Belgium and Google News Belgium websites. The suit was
brought by Copiepresse, a newspaper group representing 17
Belgian newspapers including Le Soir and La Libre Belgique.
The group claimed that its articles, editorials, and
contributions hold significant value and that the technology
employed by Google's search services compromises their
content by allowing web users to avoid archived article
charges normally levied by the publishers' own websites.
The February decision reiterated the previous court order
for removal of links to the group's content, but in a
victory for Google, lowered the fine for each day's delay in
removing the content to 25,000 euros per day from the
original 1,000,000 euros per day. Google maintains
Copiepresse's legal action was unwarranted because
sufficient extra-legal remedies to their complaints exist
and because the contested content is only offered in
excerpted form, which according to Google constitutes "fair
use."

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CACHE-ING TECHNOLOGY AT ISSUE
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2. (U) When Copiepresse originally brought suit it was
joined by two groups representing Belgian photographers,
SOFAM and SCAM; those two groups have since settled with
Google. Google argues that Copiepresse is taking issue over
a technology that is inherent to how internet search engines
operate. When searching for a news story or any website on
Google, a user is returned results based on keywords and
tags placed within websites by their designers. According
to Google, content publishers and their web designers more
often complain about exclusion from access to 8 million
Google users than inclusion on a Google search for a
particular keyword. The deeper issue is that Google also
offers an alternative to simply clicking on a link to a
website and visiting its live content. Google's engine
continuously and proactively crawls the internet, copies,
and then temporarily stores websites in its "cache." This
allows users to click on the cached link of a website
instead of the active hyperlink, to access the copy Google
has made, which is useful in case the live version of the
site is experiencing technical problems or a user wants to
see a historic version of tnt
voval, and does not employ the cache
feature, although many news articles can still be found, if
no action is taken by the publisher, outside of Google News
where they could possibly be cached. Google estimates that
95 percent of its news users do not navigate outside of
Google News.

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COMPANY POSITIONS
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4. (U) Google argues that its cache feature is relatively
unknown and is primarily used by web historians and
archivists. It stresses the two methods of removal of
content, requests from publishers and the automated tagging
system, and argues that the public benefits from historical
recording of this type. Google also states that it forwards
for free very valuable web traffic to publisher's websites
where users can be charged for subscriptions or content
access. Copiepresse claims that the automated method of
excluding their sites is insufficient, because this
technique is not legally recognized, and suggests that
Google should not be allowed to dictate its own terms of
copyright law adherence.


BRUSSELS 00000790 002 OF 002


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ISSUES STILL IN CONTENTION
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5. (U) In response to the court order, Google removed any
references to the plaintiffs' websites on all their Belgian
search vehicles, such that if you typed "Le Soir" into
Google.be, nothing, not even their homepage, comes back.
Copiepresse claims that content is still appearing on other
Google websites outside of Belgium and therefore, fines
should still be accruing. Google views the ruling as
binding only for its Belgian domains, Google.be,
news.google.be, and so forth, such that the court decision
will not affect how it operates its search or web crawling
cache in general. Google continues to appeal the fines as
well. While dismissing the idea of paying the group solely
for the right to cache its sites, Google has expressed
openness to licensing agreements that would allow its users
more open and in-depth access to publishers' content.

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COMMENTS
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6. (U) The persistence of Copiepresse in the legal arena
over this issue may go beyond fulfilling its group members'
interest in safeguarding their works, considering Google
appears to have responded to the substance of their
complaint. Whether Copiepresse will be awarded any damages
is not clear. The group is also pursuing legal action
against other search engines such as Yahoo and Microsoft.
If no damages are imposed for possible past infringement, it
would seem that Copiepresse could have obtained the same
result - removing links to its publishers from Google - more
cost-effectively by using mechanisms available within
Google, i.e. asking Google to remove cache links to its
sites, using anti-web crawling code, or entering
negotiations with Google about revenue sharing through the
hosting and syndication of premium and archived news
content.
IMBRIE