Your Clueless Honor, Clueless Members of the Clueless Jury...
A Belgian Court has ruled in favor of Belgian newspapers who somehow felt harmed by increasing the reach of their articles to a world-wide audience.
The argument goes like this:
Copiepresse argues that versions of news articles stored on Google can be seen on its service even after the articles are no longer freely accessible on a newspaper's Web site.
Let's take a look at Google News
The archival function is in no way available on Google News. So ... is this merely an archival argument.
An ordinary web search will return cached information (see the Cached link above).
Yes, that is a cached link that may be pervasive beyond the lifetime of the "free" availability of the story.
Now, my Question for Copiepresse is "How can you be so influential and so monsterously stupid at the same time?"
Why would you give up arguably the only portal to billions of readers worldwide because of obscure link caching that most people do not even use?
Are you afraid of being a news resource? Are you afraid to expand your reach?
The court was interpreting law. It was a mechanical event. But Copiepresse had to wake up one morning and think to themselves "Hey, making our news nearly impossible to find, when everyone elses is easy to find would be good for us!"
Blogged at McGraw Street Cafe in Seattle Using Windows Live Writer
Link to Belgian court rules against Google over copyright | Technology | Internet | Reuters.co.uk
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