A dramatic development and indeed a huge piece of news is flying low and under the radar this morning.
Google News lost a court case in Europe and as a result, the Belgian court that heard the case has ordered Google to stop using content from Belgian newspapers without obtaining permission or paying a royalty/fee to the copyright holder of the news stories.
Here is the original court paperwork.
This is very significant news, as it represents the first victory for the old order of “elite media” over the new media Internet sources like Google News. The lumbering giant that is the newspaper seems to have stirred and, at least for the moment, has claimed a victory. At this point, no news stories from sources in the Belgian Association of Newspaper Editors will be found on Google.
The Belgian media group represents the French and German-speaking media outlets in the country, according to an Associated Press brief that was hidden on page eight of the Metro, today. Google News lists headlines, short excerpts and even thumbnails of news photos presented as previews to link to the full articles.
This is a big victory for the traditional newspaper, but the traditional newspapers aren’t reporting on it with any degree of aggressiveness.
Slashdot, Brand Republic and the Star Bulletin have picked this story up so far. Only one of these is a newspaper.
Other papers have made reference to it, but the story is being buried under a barrage of advertisements on the deep inside pages as a small, un-detailed brief.
