Copiepresse, a group representing French and German-language Belgian newspaper publishers, has just sent out a legal warning to Yahoo! about their display of archived news articles.Copiepresse have had previous dealings with Yahoo!'s fellow search engines Google and MSN, and have been at the forefront of campaigns against search engines that publish news articles and photographs via news aggregators such as Google News.
The group now want Yahoo! to remove links to its archived news items, claiming that the postings are in breach of Belgian copyright laws. Copiepresse, representing 17 newspaper publishers, have complained that the search engine's 'cached' links, which are featured on Yahoo! France, provide readers with free access to archived articles which would otherwise only be available through paid-for subscriptions.
On Thursday, Copiepresse lawyer, Bernard Magrez said of the complaint: "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."
The complaint follows a legal challenge by Copiepresse against Google, which has since seen Belgian content being stripped from Google News, pending a court ruling into the case that is expected to be announced early this year. Last year, Google were ordered by a court to remove content from Belgian newspapers from their search results, but have since launched a challenge to the ruling on the grounds that it only provided 'snippets' of the articles and gave out full links to the newspapers' web sites.
Copiepresse has also asked the Microsoft-owned MSN search engine to stop displaying Belgian newspaper articles on its site. The group claims Microsoft have been in discussions with them in order to try and thrash out a compromise solution.
The Wall Street Journal reported, however, that Yahoo! rejected Copiepresse's claims that it had violated the country's copyright laws by publishing sections of the articles without permission. While the publishers of the link, Yahoo! France, said in a statement that it "respects the copyright of content owners", it appears that Yahoo! have not yet publicly laid out any plans to challenge the group in court, only saying that it would "respond in an appropriate manner" to the complaint.
Despite the complaint, many commentators have pointed out the absurdity of such an action by Copiepresse, arguing that the search results provided by search engines ensure more web traffic and advertising revenue. As a result, Belgian newspapers will be faced with the threat that any legal action may result in a lack of visibility on the world's major search engines, which will in turn have a significant impact of web-traffic and advertising revenue.
