Belgian News Copyright Fight Lost

Google lost a copyright lawsuit to Belgian newspapers that had demanded it remove headlines and links to articles posted on its news site without their permission.

"Google is reproducing and publishing works protected by copyright," [the court] said. "Google cannot call on any exceptions set out by law relating to copyright or similar rights."

It decided in favor of Copiepresse, a copyright protection group representing 17 mostly French-language newspapers that complained the search engine's "cached" links offered free access to archived articles that the papers usually sell.

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