No links = no web
If you link to someone who doesn’t want to be linked to, they can sue you. That’s pretty much the result of the court case between Google and Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and Le Soir. You can read the report here.
This is a stupid decision. There’s no two ways around it. First of all, newspapers should want Google traffic. Remember this when in 5 years these two Belgian newspapers stop printing because evil online publications are better and faster and make more money than them.
Second, both of these publications offer RSS feeds. I can’t use words strong enough to explain how dumb it is to have RSS feeds and suing someone for using links to your content and snippets from your articles. It’s like giving away apples but then complaining if the guy you gave the apples to gives them away to someone else. Who are they gonna sue next, the RSS readers like Bloglines for picking up their content?
Hello, Belgian newspapers, this is your wake up call. If you don’t want people to get your content without going to your page, do not use RSS. It’s making you look ignorant. It’s making whoever judged against Google in this case look even more daft.
Let’s forget about the newspapers and RSS for a second, and look at the implications of this case were it to be used as a reference for the future.
Links are one of the foundations of the web. How can you organize content without links? You say ‘you can’t link to me‘? I say, get off the web then. If you don’t want getting linked to, go offline. The Internet is all about connections, links, and networking.
I sincerely hope that common sense will prevail here and that this case will be overturned, or at least forgotten as a stupid mistake. Imagine what would happen to the web if you could forbid getting linked to. First thing that comes to mind are social content sites which consist practically only of links, like Digg, Reddit, Netscape. Will these sites one day be deemed ‘illegal’, just like Napster back in the day? What about Wikipedia and its references? What about sites like Techmeme, Tailrank, Megite? What about Popurls? The list goes on and on.
In the Internet age, some people are pushing the concept of copyright too far. You can’t forbid people to think about your content, talk about your content, discuss it, link to it, mash it up, organize it, syndicate it. If you don’t want any of the above to happen to your content, get off the web. Hell, stop showing your content to anyone at all. That’s the best way to make sure your content is safe.
February 14th, 2007 at 3:30 am
No links, no Web…
Franticindustries discusses the stupidity of the belgian courtsÂ’ decision on the case between Google and the belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique* and Le Soir*, which ruled that Google Inc. violated copyright laws by publishing links to Belgian newsp….
February 14th, 2007 at 4:23 am
That’s it! THANK YOU!
February 14th, 2007 at 5:17 am
I agree with you fundamentally, but I think you may have missed the point of the lawsuit. The newspapers were suing over the fact that Google was linking directly to articles that are generally found through a paid-content-area of their website.
Now technically, they should be suing their designers and programmers for allowing people to view these pages while not logged in, but the point remains.
I do agree though, stupid lawsuit, stupid judgement, stupid newspapers.
February 14th, 2007 at 6:13 am
@Stephen: yes, I’m reading some more in-depth reports now and the matter is not as simple as it seemed. Still, it seems that the notion that you can sue someone only for linking to your content has been pushed through together with the rest of the lawsuit.
February 14th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Last April, The Toronto Star warned that they would be billing everyone $200 simply for linking to one of their articles. They rescinded their threat rather quickly but I think it’s relevant to this topic. These old-media heavyweights will soon learn to embrace the internet, instead of fighting it like an unbeatable plague.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head. I’m glad there are still sane people in this world like you that can see things logically.
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