Google has once again been ordered to not index and display the content from a group of Belgian publishers. It started back in September 2006 with Google Cache & Google News Not Allowed in Belgium and then in late November Google & Belgium: Google Goes to Court Over News Inclusion. It appears that Google lost the case and will try to appeal once again.
Danny Sullivan has the ultimate write up named Google Loses In Belgium Newspaper Case:
A Belgium court has found that Google did violate copyright when including material from several Belgian newspapers in its search index. Google may have to pay a fine, but the ruling is far more positive for the company. Google can continue to index content without explicit permission, while content owners in Belgium must now ask for removal via email rather than using the long established mechanisms of robots.txt and meta robots tags.
Google lost, but won. From now on content owners in Belgium have to ask for removal of their content via email (not via robots.txt or meta tags).
Danny has spoken with Google on the ruling and has more insight on the details of the case, if interested.
This whole thing is still funny to many SEMs. A publisher is asking to be kicked out of the Google index. They are asking for less exposure.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
