Google And Belgians Happy Together

Instead of the bitterness of Brussels sprouts-flavored litigation, Google and courtroom foe Copiepresse are sharing Belgian chocolates and working happily together on their linking/copyright issues. Google's legal fight with Copiepresse over the linking of Belgian newspaper content online has reached a calmer place.

An AP report out of the Belgian capital said the two sides are enjoying "constructive dialogue" following their contentious courtroom battle. Copiepresse accused Google of infringing on the rights of the papers it manages.

Rather than simply placing a relevant robots.txt file on the web servers for the papers in question, Copiepresse took Google to court. Copiepresse's win forced Google to post a notice about it on their Belgian home page for five days.

The two sides have made a statement about the recent change. They jointly said in the report that Google could reference Copiepresse-managed content. However, Google will not be archiving copies of stories.

"The Belgian French and German-language daily press publishers and Google Inc. intend to use a quiet period in the court dispute to continue their efforts to identify tangible ways to collaborate in the long term," they said in the report.

Copiepresse charges people to access older articles, a practice used in the US by papers like the New York Times. The use of the no-archive meta tag will keep Google from caching articles appearing on Copiepresse news websites.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/05/03/google-and-belgians-happy-together