Apparently, French press agency AFP is sueing Google because indexing their website for Google News is not “fair use”. In the article, Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, says:

“The value of content must be understood by consumers so that new business models can evolve. Industry must have legal certainty and the confidence that their intellectual property will be protected.”

Personally, I think AFP’s lawsuit is just because they want to extort some money from Google - I can’t see a breach of fair use on Google’s News site
and if anything I’ve visited the linked-to sites more often because of it.

And if the publishers have trouble making money from their content (which is their good right, they need to pay all these journalists), some free advice from me: keep trying to find new business models. Don’t get bogged down in court defending your old ones.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 9:02 am and is filed under Digital Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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