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Google denies report on Belgian fines

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

A Google spokesman on Wednesday denied a report that says the search giant faces fines of 34 million euros ($43 million) in a copyright case in Belgium.

Google's fines for not removing links in Google News to Belgian news sources reached 34 million euros ($43 million) before Copiepresse, which represents French- and German-language Belgian publishers, agreed to temporarily suspend the daily fine counter last week, according to an article on Poynter Online, which cited an item on Planet Multimedia that is in Dutch. That report said Google was having difficulty determining which domains should be blocked and asked Copiepresse for help.

"Google has complied with the Copiepresse judgment and we are not aware of any fine. We believe this story to be completely untrue," Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said in an e-mail statement.

Google was sued in August by Copiepresse. The lawsuit argued that the search engine and Google News breached the publishers' copyright. A court ruled against Google in September and ordered the company to remove the publishers' content from the Google Belgian search site and Google News. Google says it did this and asked the court to reconsider its decision. The court agreed to that request and set a hearing date for November, according to the Google Blog.

The Belgian publisher's group isn't just targeting Google. After receiving a cease-and-desist order from Copiepresse, Microsoft said it would remove links to the news sources from its news aggregation site earlier this month.