Fergie's Tech Blog

Belgian Newspapers Target Yahoo! After Forcing Google to Bend on Linking

Eric Bangeman writes on ARS Technica:

Long known for making the best beer in the world, Belgium has also become known for applying its copyright laws to news aggregators that summarize and link to the country's newspapers. The latest tiff comes courtesy of Yahoo and Copiepresse, Belgium's copyright enforcement group.

Yahoo, like other news aggregators, publishes summaries and links to news articles all over the Internet. This isn't a problem in most places, but Belgian publishers aren't fans of the practice. Bernard Magrez, a lawyer for the Belgian copyright watchdog, has accused Yahoo of publishing articles without authorization. As a result, Copiepresse has sent a "cease and desist" letter to Yahoo, requesting that they stop linking to articles on the newspapers' websites.

posted by Fergie @ 1/19/2007 10:43:00 AM