Following months of legal battle, Google has lost a copyright lawsuit in Belgium brought on by Copiepresse, a publishing group composed of 17 mostly French-language newspapers. The newspapers complained that Google breached copyrights by publishing headlines and links to news stories without permission. Copiepresse also claimed Google’s cached links allowed searchers to find and read past articles that were no longer available for free online. Google has been ordered to pay a retroactive fine for the days it used the content; Google will obviously appeal the decision. Copiepresse has also brought a case against MSN, stating search engines are profiting unfairly by posting content from its members’ newspapers on their sites, where they often sell advertising.The decision seems be based on the economic impact on the copyrighted work which is a sensitive issue outside of the United States. Case law in Europe has recently been stricter that in the United States. A French court, back in 2001 ruled that Yahoo! must screen the material offered for sale via its auction services and is responsible for preventing the sale of Nazi propaganda through its sites. The larger issue is that international courts are applying and referencing laws enacted before the advent of the internet and the explosion of aggregation as an economic driver. Interestingly enough Google was at the centre of a syndication dispute with a Ecademy, a leading business networking site in the UK. Google demanded the removal of RSS-powered Google News headlines from Ecademy and made it clear Webmasters are not allowed to display headlines from Google News on third-party sites.Without a doubt this ruling will galvanize both sides of the fair linking issue – could we soon see Starbucks partnering with media publishers to offer wi-fi access to fair linking content?  

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