Google has reached an agreement with the Belgian copyright groups Sofam and Scam who represented about 3700 photographers and journalists respectively. Google lost a copyright case initiated by the group Copiepresse that was representing French and German language newspapers in Belgium earlier this year in September. Though Google has filed a review of the case, which is being reheard now, it had to remove the links to 17 newspapers from Google News.
Talking over the phone to New York Times, Jessica Powell, a spokeswoman for Google said,
We reached an agreement with Sofam and Scam that will help us make extensive use of their content.
However, she declined to divulge the details of the agreement reached, neither did she reveal if Google is paying the groups for the content. She also declined to say if Google was considering similar deals with other newspapers.
The dispute in Belgium with Google prompted Microsoft to remove links to Belgian newspapers in October from its search engine fearing that it might be dragged into a similar lawsuit.
This has again raised the question if old-fashioned copyright protection laws apply to Internet search services like Google Search or MSN Search.
News: The New York Times
