A court in Belgium ruled Tuesday that Google violated the law by publishing copyrighted content without permission on Google
News and ordered the infringing articles, pictures, and links removed.

Google expressed disappointment with the judgment and promised to appeal.

"We believe that Google News
is entirely legal," a company spokesperson says. "We only ever show the
headlines and a few snippets of text and small thumbnail images. If
people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the
newspaper's Web site. Search tools such as Google Web Search
and Google News are of real benefit to publishers because they drive
valuable traffic to their Web sites and connect them to a wider global
audience."

Google may have a point: According to statistics provided by Amazon's Alexa.com
, Le Soir and La Derniere Heure
-- two of the Belgian papers represented by Copiepresse, the group of
18 French- and German-language publications that brought the suit early
in 2006 -- show a slight decline in traffic over the past year.

It's not clear, however, whether the drop in traffic is coincidental or
is the result of efforts by Google to remove the disputed content and
make it unavailable to searchers.

Copiepresse told Le Soir
that it expected the ruling would have significant international impact
because the Belgian legislation in question corresponds to broader
European rights. Google could thus face similar claims in other E.U.
countries. Copiepresse already has indicated that it might pursue
similar cases against Microsoft and Yahoo.

The decision represents a setback for Google and its ambitions to
expand information access. "I think it's a serious wake-up call to
Google that says you've got a very aggressive approach to copyright,"
says Lee Carl Bromberg, co-founder of Bromberg & Sunstein, a law
firm specializing in intellectual property issues. "This is a
significant ruling against them saying not only have you gone too far,
but it's going to cost you."

The ruling will cost Google, though less than the initial
proposed penalty of 1 million ($1.3 million) per day. The court reduced
a retroactive daily fine imposed for noncompliance last September to
25,000 ($32,470) per day. Google says it complied with the order that
same month, but Copiepresse claims infringing material was still
available through Google three weeks ago. Bernard Magrez, a lawyer for
Copiepresse, estimates that Google is currently liable for 3 million
($3.9 million), down from 130 million ($168.84 million), according to Le Soir.

More broadly, the ruling may send the message to other potential litigants
that Google's dominance online doesn't carry over into court. Even
though the decision in Belgium isn't binding in the United States,
Bromberg says, "I wouldn't be surprised to see people fighting Google
elsewhere cite the decision in their legal briefs."