Belgian Newspapers To Google: Pay Us $77M For Indexing Our News

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Rafat Ali

paidContent.org
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; 10:07 AM

Put it that way, it does sound absurd, though of course a very small amount for Google: the Belgian newspapers' association Copiepresse is asking Google ( NSDQ: GOOG) to pay up to $77 million in damages for publishing and storing their content (on Google News and search) without permission. Copiepresse has summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court in September that will decide on their claim that they suffered damages of between $51.7 million and $77.5 million, reports AP. The group called on Google to pay a provisional amount of $6.3 million.

Last year Google lost a lawsuit filed by the association that forced it to remove headlines and links to stories on Google News service and cache stored in its search engine, without the copyright owners' permission. Google had been ordered to remove the material and pay a fine of $32,500 a day until the ruling in Feb last year...the court cut a retroactive daily fine of $32,390 for each day Google did not comply.

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