Last month a Belgium court ruled that Google had infringed the copyright of several newspapers. It’s crime? Indexing their content, and presenting it to users as part of the Google News service.
Surely, many said at the time, a search engine must be allowed to index content, no?
Well, no. Apparently not. Discussion of the judgement can be found here, and if it is an accurate report, it is hard not to side with the Belgiums on this one. Copyright holders ought to have control over the use of their work, even on the net – and regardless of whether or not they are aware of a de facto but unofficial standard. In other words, with the law as it stands, one should opt in, not opt out, of having data indexed by Google.
Would this mean the end of the internet as we know it? Well, it would certainly mean the end of data ending up in Google’s cache without the knowledge of the (naive) content provider. Of course, Google would become that much less useful.
But perhaps it doesn’t end there. The outcome of this may be a revision of European law on “fair use” rights: and clarification of that area would be a win for everyone.