CompuWorld

After taking action against Microsoft and Google, Belgium's French-speaking newspapers are seeking redress from another Internet search engine, Yahoo, their lawyer has said. "We sent a letter of formal notice to Yahoo yesterday" so that it will stop publishing articles from Belgian newspapers on its search engine without prior authorisation, said Bernard Magrez, lawyer for the editors group Copiepresse said on Thursday. Copiepresse accuses Yahoo of violating copyright laws by giving Internet users access to archived newspaper articles which the papers themselves would now charge people to read.While its makes no threats in its letter, Copiepresse could take legal action if it is not satisfied with Yahoo's response.

A year ago, Copiepresse took Google News to court in Belgium to stop it reproducing content from French-language and German-language newspapers in Belgium on its Belgian website. On September 5, a lower court ordered the California-based company to desist, and said it would face a daily fine of one million euros (1.3 million dollars) if it did not comply with the ruling. Google has appealed the decision and a verdict is expected by the end of the month.

The newspapers had also asked Microsoft to stop the unauthorised publishing of articles on its "www.msn.be" site, which the company later did.

Yahoo released a statement saying that it "respects the copyright of content owners" and will "respond in an appropriate manner" to Copiepresse's complaints.

It's difficult to see how the Belgian newspapers will benefit by having their links and content summaries stripped from all the major search engines. Easily-found external links drive traffic to web sites, which most site operators agree is a good thing. Forcing search engines to stop indexing and linking their content may give the newspapers more control over how their content is displayed and used, but that short-term benefit is outweighed by the prospect of lower site traffic and increasing irrelevance on the Internet.