Belgian! Newspapers! Ask! Yahoo! To! Stop! Linking!

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 20 January 2007 19:21

Your IT - Home IT

As happened with Google a few months ago, Belgium’s Copiepresse organization has asked Yahoo to “remove all links to our newspapers’ content”. Is this bad news for Belgian news?

The secretary-general of Copiepress, Margaret Boribon, told Reuters that the organization had sent a formal letter to Yahoo requesting it to remove all links to our newspapers' content. Copiepress is an organization that represents seventeen French and German language Belgian newspapers.

If Yahoo failed to respond, Boribon stated that Copiepresse would have no other choice but to take Yahoo to court..

Copiepress is accusing Yahoo of violation of Belgian copyright laws, as Yahoo gives their users access to archived newspaper articles which would normally need payment to access once the newspaper in question archives it and removes it from being freely accessible.

This follows similar action to that taken against Google last year, with a lower court ordering Google to desist, threatening a fine of €1 mlillion per day (US $1.3m) for non-compliance with the ruling. Google has appealed this decision, with an official verdict by the end of January.

Microsoft was also asked the cease ‘unauthorized publishing’ of articles to their Belgian MSN website, which Microsoft is reported to have acceded to.

The big worry for Belgian newspapers who have taken this action is their subsequent lack of visibility on the world’s major search engines – Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. This could result in lower traffic figures, lower advertising revenues and less relevance for Belgium on a global scale.

How Belgian newspapers and the Copiepresse organization will react to this in the future, if lower traffic and advertising revenues come to pass, is unknown. Google, Yahoo or Microsoft may not look too kindly on any request to re-include Belgian newspapers, were this request ever to eventuate!