Lawyers for Belgium's French-speaking newspapers and Internet search engine Google clashed in court on Friday during a hearing into a copyright case against the US giant.
The newspaper editors, who have lodged the case against Google, accuse it of violating copyright rules by displaying parts of articles, photos and graphics from their media Web sites on its own site without permission or compensation.
"Google sucks up content from web sites and recopies it onto its site," said Bernard Magrez, lawyer for Copiepress, an association representing the papers.
For example, he said, Internet users logging on to the Web site of Belgian newspaper Le Soir had to pay to access its archived articles, but if they went onto Google's site, they could access those articles for free.
Hitting back, Google's lawyers said the papers were seeking to profit from its immense financial success in recent years.
"What's at stake today is not copyright but money," lawyer Erik Valgaeren told the court in Brussels.
Google's main defense is that it is a search engine that helps users find information on other Web sites and not a so-called portal that hosts its own information.
Google News only displays 150 characters per article, Google lawyer Celine Eyers said. The company considers that it should not have to pay copyright fees because it only directs users to newspapers sites.
"Google thinks that newspapers should thank it for raising the profile of their work," said Karine Doutrelepont, a lawyer for an association which manages copyright for Belgian journalists and backs the newspapers.
But, she added, "it asphyxiates the entire content through appropriation."
After a hearing lasting more than three hours, the presiding judge said she would issue a ruling on the case "after the Christmas holidays," without offering a precise date.
On Sept. 5, a lower court ordered Google News to stop reproducing content from French-language and German-language newspapers in Belgium on its Belgian Web site.
The California-based company, which faced a daily fine of one million euros (US$1.3 million) if it did not comply with that ruling, more or less acquiesced, although there was some grumbling from the papers about items still available on Google's archive section.
Separately, Italian prosecutors on Friday put two Google Italy representatives under investigation as part of an inquiry into how a video of teenagers harassing an autistic classmate surfaced on its Video site, a judicial source said.
The two are accused of failing to check on the content of the video posted on the Internet search engine's Web site.
The video, which sparked outrage in the country, showed four teenagers beating and poking fun at a 17-year-old disabled boy in a classroom in the northern Italian city of Turin.
Prosecutors have already put the four students and a teacher under investigation. The students have also been suspended until the end of the school year.
A spokeswoman for Google in Europe said the Internet search engine was sorry for the distress caused by the video and had acted swiftly when it was informed of its content.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
RSS