Belgium and Google — stupid, stupid, stupid
I confess that I still don’t get the whole Belgium vs. Google thing. I keep reading about it and reading about it, and thinking about it — hoping that I have somehow missed a crucial point or argument in the newspapers’ position that makes this whole thing sensible in any way. But by now I am totally convinced: It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. It is just dumb, with a capital D.
As Danny Sullivan notes in his overview of the case, this complaint from the Belgian group known as Copiepresse dates back almost a year. After the first complaint — as is customary in these types of cases, when sites don’t want to be included in Google’s index — the search engine advised the agency (as Google notes here) to use the well-known “robots.txt” file to exclude parts of its websites from Google’s spider-bots. Copiepress apparently said that this process, which takes about 10 minutes, was unacceptable.
So after a year of legal wrangling, and millions of dollars in legal costs, the Belgian group has “won” and has forced Google to remove its newspaper content. In other words, it has prevented the world’s largest and most respected search engine from showing links to that content to people who want that content — and doing so for free. And the claim that Google makes money from this content, which others have argued in the past, is just as stupid, since Google News doesn’t carry advertisements on its content pages.
Carlo at Techdirt shares my feelings on this matter, and I know many other journalists who do as well. Some companies would kill for the kind of profile and access that being linked in Google News provides to potential readers. Someone at Copiepresse clearly sees this as some kind of noble battle against a U.S. tech giant, but all they are really doing is harming themselves. Oh yes, and looking stupid. Did I mention that part?
Update:
Tim O’Reilly says over here that he supports the publishers — who complain that Google’s “cached” links provide access to their archived content (for which they charge). But as a commenter notes, there is already an established way to let Google crawl your pages without caching, called the “noarchive” tag. I also fail to see why Tim supports Google’s use of “snippets” for book search, but doesn’t support the same thing for news search.
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(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 2:47 pm)
I think you don’t completely get it. Google is providing a free copy of the article after the newspaper decided to charge its users for it.
When a new article is published on the website of these newspapers, it is first available for free. At that time, Google caches the page.
However, after a week, the newspaper limits the article to the first few lines, and to see the rest, you have to pay. This is normal, else they wouldn’t be making any money.
However, Google still has that cached copy available in its cache, and it still does months later.
So, Google in fact provides you a back door to still view the article for free, even after the newspaper has decided to charge its users to read the whole entry.
And on the whole robots.txt and “noarchive” tag thing: isn’t that working backwards? When I publish a book, or a song, it’s also always under copyright, and I don’t have to include an additional text “Don’t copy this, please.” It’s only when I want it to be freely available to re-distribute I have to notify about this, not the other way around.
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 3:06 pm)
JW, I do get it — I know that Google provides the cached copy after a newspaper has put the story in their archives. I just don’t see why it’s such a big deal to use the “noarchive” tag when the status of the story changes.
Is this backwards? Only if you compare it to a centuries-old copyright system that was designed to work with physical goods such as books, or newspapers that were actually printed on paper.
If Belgian newspapers want to dig in their heels and try to force Google to operate on that basis because they want to pretend that copyright law doesn’t have to evolve in the face of new technology — technology that can operate to their benefit, rather than doing them harm — then they can certainly do that. I just think it’s dumb.
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 6:53 pm)
If it makes you feel any better, nobody I know here gets it either (I work for VNU BP, a Belgian publisher). Always a pleasure to see our country getting a lot of blog coverage, though
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 7:32 pm)
Thanks for that, Robin. And as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I have nothing but respect for Belgium — particularly for the whole waffle thing, not to mention inventing French fries (although I’m not so big on the mayonnaise part). Thanks for the comment.
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 7:58 pm)
You left out diamonds, carpets, chocolate, beer, assembled cars, …
On a serious note, I’m also editing a blog on emerging Web 2.0 initiatives coming from Belgian companies (or individuals). If you would like to follow up: http://web.2point0.be
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 8:12 pm)
Maybe that would help :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfTLfXmqCKo
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 9:04 pm)
Thanks, Robin. I don’t really have any interest in diamonds (or carpets for that matter), and I don’t like beer or cars all that much either — but you definitely get some props for the chocolate. Thanks for reminding me
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 7:24 am)
[…] Mathew Ingram: Belgium and Google — stupid, stupid, stupid “I confess that I still don’t get the whole Belgium vs. Google thing. I keep reading about it and reading about it, and thinking about it — hoping that I have somehow missed a crucial point or argument in the newspapers’ position that makes this who (tags: google googlenews belgium copyright copiepresse) […]
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 6:08 am)
Mathew, to better understand the Copiepresse position, take a look at my interview with Margaret Boribon, secretary general of Copiepresse (audio plus transcriptions in English and French). Their position is nearly identical to that of the AFP.
(On Feb 13th, 2007 at 9:58 am)
Thank you for that, Sean — a very informative interview. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the Copiepresse position now, which seems to rest primarily on the fact that Google doesn’t ask for permission to crawl or index their content. And I would just say again that even if she is right in terms of Belgian law, the Copiepresse position is inherently stupid — both in terms of how it affects Belgian newspapers, and in how it would affect the functioning of the Internet if such a principle were broadly applied.