Belgian! newspapers! warn! Yahoo! over! links!

By Jan Libbenga • Get more from this author

Posted in Law, 22nd January 2007 11:34 GMT

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Belgium's French language newspapers are continuing their copyright crusade and this time want compensation from search engine Yahoo!.

The Copiepress group, which includes La Derniére Heure, La Libre Belgique, and Le Soir, is demanding Yahoo! stops publishing articles from Belgian newspapers without prior authorisation, AFP reports.

Last year, Copiepress took Google to court to stop it reproducing content from the French and German language Belgian papers. The publisher successfully argued that Google News Belgium infringed its copyright by republishing snippets of its newspapers.

Facing a fine of €500,000 a day, Google removed all links from its Google News Search service. Meanwhile, the search engine has appealed the decision and a verdict is expected by the end of the month.

So far, newspapers in the Flemish part of Belgium haven't joined their collegues in Wallonia.

Copiepresse accuses Yahoo! of violating copyright laws by giving internet users access to archived newspaper articles. The Belgian newspapers have also asked Microsoft to stop the unauthorised publishing of articles and it too agreed to remove all links to articles in Belgian newspapers from its search engines and news aggregators.

But, Microsoft underlined that these measures do not imply any acknowledgement or recognition of Copiepresse's rights. ®

Understand how application security is evolving