Grazing housing sites under conditions; what about Google

An interesting test case for copyright and database right has come to Dutch court. The largest Dutch housing site Funda requested a temporary injunction of a new housing site Jaap.nl.

Funda, a site set up by the association of real estate agents, had to fight yet another provider who grazed the Funda site with robots and copied material without permission. In an earlier case Funda lost, but with Jaap.nl Funda was more successful.

The housing sites have been at each others’ throat for some years now. Funda has a site, to which 40.000 real estate agents deliver their housing offers. Other sites say that there are more offers in the market and start a competition, which site has the most;see the example of the Jaap.nl site, claiming 18 pct more offers. By claiming that the public has a right to search all offers on the market, they copy Funda’s offers completely or partially with the complete text and photograph, and collect other offers. Whenever they get a court case, they always claim that Funda is a monopolist. But the court threw this monopoly claim out as there are more sites active on the housing market.

Funda and a supporting organisation of real estate agents have faithfully fought all new competitors, arguing amongst others illegal copying and deeplinking. With the case versus Jaap.nl copyright and database right was on the roll again.

The real estate agents, whose association has a 78 per cent majority share in Funda, pay for putting up their housing advertisements. Jaap.nl copied these, using a spider grazing the Funda site, but without permission of the respective real estate agent. The court stipulated that Jaap.nl would have to ask permission from every single real estate agent. But the court went further this time and limited the number of symbols to be copied to 155 as well as the format of the images to maximally 194x145 pixels.

The court did not make clear whether Jaap.nl infringed copyright in a limited sense, i.c. originality. But it made clear that it concerns here the protection of other documents, which is part of the national Database law, based on the former European database directive.
The case against Jaap.nl was to get a temporary injunction. The judge ordered Jaap.nl to redress the database in 48 hours. Besides the judge advised Jaap.nl to keep some money ready in case they would loose the bottom procedure.

Google News
The Jaap.nl case is interesting as the judge put three conditions to grazing sites: permission of the original owner of the information, not just the aggregators; a limitation to copying of 155 symbols of text; a limitation to an image of 194x145 pixels. Immediately the association with the case of Google News in Europe comes up. Google News grazes sites, copies a limited number of symbols text and produces small pictures. Will this judgement offer Google News a road to continuing its services in the European countries? Presently Google News copies a limited number of symbols text and produces a thumbnail. But so far Google News does not (actively) ask permission from the newspaper owners, who could of course ask money in return.

Blog Posting Number: 839

Tags: copyright, database law

Belgian newspapers back on Google News

The Belgium French language newspapers are back on Google News. However the conflict is not officially solved yet between the two parties. But it looks like the parties are nearing an agreement.

In February, Google lost a court case about publishing newspaper articles on Google News. According to the judge Google infringed on the copyright of articles or parts of articles by placing the articles or parts of them on the Google site. In order to avoid heavy penalties Google removed all article from Google news and from its cache.

But since Thursday 17 French language newspapers, united in Copiepresse, are back on Google. In a statement Copiepresse says that Google can show articles despite the lack of an agreement. It means that both parties are close to an agreement. The newspapers might be back, but not all articles will be entered into the Google index. Archived articles, for which readers will have to pay, can not be accessed through Google News. These articles bear the tag NO ARCHIVE.

Representatives of Copiepresse and Google stated also that they do not want to fight the conflict in court. The newspapers are also talking to Yahoo and MSN.

Blog Posting Number: 745

Tags: Copiepresse, Google News

Google News in problems with European sites (3)

As the dust around Belgian Google News is settling, I was eager to see what Google would with the news services. Yes Google started two news services in Belgium. It could have been three, as Belgium has three official languages: Flemish, French and German. But as German is only spoken around the Belgian German border, Google set up two news services, one in Flemish and one in French.

Did Google stop those services after the court sentence? No it did not. It is still running the news services by borrowing articles from newspapers published in neighbouring countries and from publications which did object to be published in Google News service. (I use publishing rather than linking, given the caching of articles). This new situation can lead to some hilarious situations.

The Google News Belgie is the Flemish language service. Flemish is a language related to the Dutch language. In fact is like US and UK English, be it the Flemish stick more to the original language than the Dutch, who use a lot of anglicisms. So, it is logical that Google News borrows articles from the Dutch newspapers and publish them with the articles of publications, which did not object to Google News. This leads to comic situations. Like today, when there is news about a prince belonging to the Belgian court. An advisor to the prince has been sentenced in court. Google news presents this item using Dutch newspaper articles plus a few articles of Belgian publications, who do not object to Google News. The Google News services are still alive and filled with Dutch newspaper articles and a couple of Belgian magazine articles.

The same trick has been applied on the Google News Belgique, the French language service. Google now borrows heavily of French newspaper publications such as le Monde and l’Express and uses a couple of articles from Belgian magazines.

Google News is still going strong in Belgium, but of course the input of quality newspaper articles has been removed. It will be interesting to see whether the amounts of visits to the services will go down.

There is another question, which I throw up and have been unable to research yet. I suspect that some Belgian publishers play it both ways: they run with the newspapers to be excluded from Google News, but do not object to their magazines to be grazed.

It is clear that Google will not stop the Google News services yet in Belgian nor in the rest of the European continent. I wonder what the answer will be of the European publishers. As usual they will have to fight Google country by country, if they want to fight the case principally.

Blog Posting Number: 667

Tags: newspaper, Google News, copyright, deeplinking, caching,

Google News in problems with European sites (2)

The news that Google will have to stop Google News in Belgium for as far as 19 French and the German language newspapers (the Flemish language newspapers had requested Google to be left out), has been received at the other side of the pond with unbelieve.

This had happened also with the sentence of September last year. Red Herring for example did not understand at all that newspaper publisher would let slip away this opportunity for marketing the newspapers. And more publications in the States wondered about the Belgian newspapers going to court.

I am part of the Online journalism discussion group organised by the Poynter Institute. And yesterday I saw the same reactions in the discussion group. Clyde H. Bentley, associate professor of Missouri School of Journalism, started off the thread with a neutral comment: “Interesting case in Europe. Will it ever happen here and if so, what does it mean for us?” I guess that us is U.S.

His comment was followed by the comment of Ryan Sholin: “I might never understand why any newspaper executive would want to pull their headlines out of news aggregators and portals. It's free advertising, brand-building, and traffic-building all in one. I've argued this point with an executive or two, and their side has always been that it builds Google's brand, not theirs. I respectfully continue to disagree”.

Publisher K. Paul Mallasch went further by saying: “Indeed. I thought of it as an honor. It's also interesting to look at the 'gatekeeping' by Google News' robot as opposed to the newspaper funded Topix.net headline service”.

Having thrown in the Buziaulane instalment into the discussion, Clyde Bentley came back with the following statement: “Jak¹s blog explanation is fascinating ‹ and forced me to go back and rethink my own opinion. While I have advocated search, the whole issue of caching opens a new set of arguments. Is a permanent cache all that different from a traditional publication, especially if you sell access to it? Probably not. If I used Google to find all those stories and then printed my own paper, I don¹t think the law would protect me.
I¹m troubled that the whole issue of intellectual property rights is undergoing a cultural sea change that may leave some of us stranded. My students ‹ journalists all ‹ insist that the stories they write are products of their own minds and that they must be paid for them (albeit sometimes with a grade). But they immediately say with equal passion that they have a right to download the music of their choice or to copy photos from the Web to use in their own work.
I¹m confused and will have to ponder this a bit more. My guess is that technology is creating a new reality and a new morality. As one of my students said: ³If you can¹t just copy from the Internet, why did they invent right-click?².”

I am glad to see that the Belgian Google News sentence is putting people across the pond to think about copyright. It is clear that there are different law systems, so different sentences in the end.

I think that K. Paul Mallasch made a relevant comment by saying that US publishers had the idea of gatekeeping their news with the Topix.net headline service, but that they were succeeded by Google. So newspaper publishers reacted, but did not bring to bear their marketing power.

Blog Posting Number: 668

Tags: newspaper, Google News, copyright, deeplinking, caching,

Google News in problems with European sites (1)

Yesterday Google lost again in the case of Google News vs Copiepresse, an association of 19 Belgian newspapers, in a Belgian court. The judge confirmed for the second time the judgement of last September, when Google was ordered to stop producing headlines and a number of first lines from mainly French and German language articles (in Belgium there are officially three languages used: Flemish, French and German).

The sentence will stir up a debate all around Europe, except for the parts which are covered by Angel-Saxon jurisdiction. In practice the newspaper organisations in other European countries can go to court and try to stop Google news. They might have a good chance.

In September the court sentenced Google News in Belgium. The sentence cantered on three aspects: consent, deeplinking and caching. Google News set up the service in Belgium without asking the Belgian publishers. Google said that it did not have to do this as it used the searching machine and set up a link. Google News deeplinked to the relevant article, without passing the front page. But the caching problem was really at the core of the court case. Google News did not just linked to the relevant article, but also kept it in cache.

All together it was all about revenues for the publishers. And rightly so Copiepresse protested with a court case. Of course the fact that Google News starts the service without consent to use the intellectual property in order to make money. But also the caching is a problem as Google keeps an article in cache in a database which might be archived by the publishers and put up for paid retrieval.

The sentence will have consequences in part in other European countries. In other countries there have been court cases concerning deeplinking. And there are sentences which contradict the Belgian sentence on this part. In The Netherlands PCM fought a case against deeplinking with Kranten.com, but lost. So a case in another European country will only take along the aspect of deeplinking, if there has been a sentence favourable for publishers. But the aspects of consent and cache will be the target of other court cases.

With the Belgian sentence in their pocket newspaper publishing associations will start other court cases. Of course they could ask Google News to take off the titles of their associated members voluntarily as the Flemish publishers, united in Rerocopy, did. But many associations want to make clear to Google that copyright and database rules are different at the other side of the pond.

The Dutch newspaper publishers’ alliance, after having taken a laid back attitude, says that it seriously will consider a court case. Also the associations in Norway and Danmark have indicated to do so. Also the international newspaper association WAN studies the possibilities of a court case.

Also in France Google News is in trouble. It first got into trouble with AFP, the French wireservice. AFP objected to the institution of Google News as it was directly hurting AFP in its revenue stream; AFP distributes press releases against payment. AFP won the case. But this case is not comparable to the Belgian. In the meantime a number of French newspaper publishers have objected against their publications being grazed; they will present their case in court on June 6th, 2007.

Looking at this court case I think that the publishers are right to defend their intellectual copyrights and their stream of revenues. On the other hand they reacted by a court case, while they also could have reacted pro-actively with their own aggregation service. By setting up a service by themselves they would have picked up more revenues than they get now in a settlement and made it more difficult for Google, Yahoo and others. And this does not only regard news articles but also advertisement revenues. Presently Google, but also other services like Yahoo, tap advertisement revenues from the conventional newspaper sources.

Blog Posting Number: 664

Tags: newspaper, Google News, copyright, deeplinking, caching,