I have been covering the Google & Belgium legal issues at Search Engine Watch for a while now and I thought it would be a good time to give a short summary for you here. Belgium publishers sued Google for including their news sources in the Google News index. They found that it was a violation of their copyright rights. Yea, shocking that a news source would ask to be delisted for the Google New index. But it is true. After a long to do, as Danny reported, Google Settles With Some Belgian Publishers Over Belgium News Inclusion. Danny has an excellent roundup of the past coverage and where it as lead to. Google is not done with Belgium...
The Belgium Court is to rule on the legality of Google including their content in the index. The ruling won't come before the end of this year, so time will tell.
You can see some of the reaction at WebmasterWorld.
I'm endlessly amazed by the number of people who insist that search engine's practice of copying data and then displaying snippets is wrong/should be made illegal/is illegal. The internet as we know it would not exist if search engines didn't do this. That, at least, is one thing upon which there can be no reasonable debate.
This is not just going in in Belgium. It is also taking place in Norway and France to some extent.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
