belgium

We need to get something out of the way.

Croatia is not Belgium. Neither is it in Belgium. Nor was it ever, in some strange historical time before America existed, Belgian in any way.

This does not seem to have prevented a Belgian lady from trusting her GPS enough to end up in Zagreb, Croatia's capital, when she was actually trying to go 90 miles from her home in Hainault Erquelinnes to Brussels.

Both, remarkably, are in Belgium.

I am grateful to Gizmodo for sending me several thousand miles to Spain's El Mundo, for there is a report … Read more

Bathroom break video: iPad magician at the world famous German "Hofbraeuhaus" in Munich, the beer capital.

Show title credit: Beatmaster (join us live at noon Eastern everyday to suggest a show title. The most-used suggestions at the end of every month will win a prize!)

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Google has settled a long-running dispute with Belgian newspaper publishers that accused the search giant of copyright infringement over its practice of linking to French- and German-language Belgian newspapers.

The group, Copiepresse, sued Google in 2006, alleging that the search giant's use of headlines and snippets of Belgian newspaper articles in its Google News aggregation service, and its practice of providing links to cached copies of the articles in its main Web search results, violated copyright. A Belgian court sided with Copiepresse last September, ordering Google to remove the links.

Google complied with the order, but the two parties … Read more

High-speed trains running from Paris to Amsterdam will now make part of the trip with the help of solar power.

On Monday, a train successfully made its inaugural run using solar powered systems along the way, said Infrabel, the company that runs Belgium's railroad network. Solar panels were installed atop a 3.4-kilometer length of man-made train tunnel that makes up part of the high-speed rail line running along the E19 highway between Amsterdam and Antwerp, Belgium (see video below).

The solar energy generated by those tunnel panels can now power things like signaling, lighting, and heating for the … Read more

In a coordinated crackdown on Internet movie piracy, police from five European countries arrested a total of 10 people following raids, according to an Associated Press report.

Five of the arrests were made in Belgium, which spearheaded the raids on Tuesday, according to the AP report. Police shut down 48 servers and charged the five suspects in Belgium with computer fraud, hacking, and being members of a criminal organization.

Interestingly, the police told the AP that the suspects, ranging in age from 25 to 30 years old, were not pirating films for their own financial gain, according to the AP. … Read more

Google is both appealing a ruling against it in a copyright case in Belgium and negotiating with the group that sued it, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Google and Copiepresse, a trade group that represents French- and German-language Belgian publishers, will ask the court at an appeals hearing on July 17 for an extension so they can have more time to negotiate, the report says.

Copiepresse sued Google last year alleging that the search giant's use of headlines and snippets of Belgian newspaper articles in its Google News aggregation service, and its practice of providing links to cached … Read more

Google has added links to Belgian newspapers back into its main Web search site after beginning talks with a group that had filed a copyright lawsuit over Google's practice of linking to French- and German-language Belgian newspapers.

The group, Copiepresse, sued Google more than a year ago alleging that the search giant's use of headlines and snippets of Belgian newspaper articles in its Google News aggregation service, and its practice of providing links to cached copies of the articles in its main Web search results, violated copyright. A Belgian court sided with Copiepresse last September, ordering Google to … Read more

>> MTV online strategy to help Viacom take on YouTube? Viacom wants you to watch clips of its popular TV shows on the Internet, but it doesn't want you to do so on YouTube. At the beginning of this month, Viacom had YouTube take down more than 100,000 clips of Viacom-owned content. Now it's spreading them out among its sites, including ComedyCentral.com and MTV.com.

>> Belgian court rules against Google over copyrights. Belgian newspapers apparently don't like Google, as they've barred the company from caching its stories for news clippings. The … Read more