downtime

This post has been updated.

The Belgian court has rejected Google's first appeal, forcing Google's compliance re: displaying newspaper content on News.Google.Be — and displaying the court's ruling there, too (via Cyberjournalist, Editor and Publisher/AP). The subsequent World Association of Newspapers reaction — a plan to launch an automated system to deal with search engines displaying news content, which may see publishers pushing for royalties (via I Want Media).

UPDATE: Dan Gillmor posts on the Center for Citizen Media Blog:  

It’s beyond idiotic for the newspapers to do this. Google is sending them customers.

No wonder the newspaper business is going in the tank. It has leaders who can’t understand fundamental reality.

(UPDATED:) Steve Yelvington agrees details "a few completely mistaken points" on the reactions to the ruling here. Yelvington and Gillmor seem to agree only that the case is ridiculous, but I see now that posting only the second sentence of this quote misrepresented the message. Yelvington wrote: "I'm not eager to see lawsuits against search engines as a primary tool for resolving this issue, but it seems to me that the Belgian ruling is well grounded in the reality of today's Internet. There is a line between fair use and thievery, and it is not Google's to define through unilateral action."

Thanks to Martin Stabe for challenging me. His Fleet Street 2.0 blog (PressGazette, U.K.) now links to more of those reactions:"Googleblog releases an official statement regarding the Copiepress suit in Belgium, plus analyses from Amy Gahran at E-Media Tidbits and Greg Ness at Sundog." Stabe also has a post analyzing the Belgium/Google case here, and quoting the same sentence from the Yelvington post as I did before the above edit.

As always, I'm continuing to explore that, um, reality (newspapers and the shift to Web-based, digital and multimedia content). I'm working on posts covering this theme (pretty much the entire theme of this blog to begin with).  

Meanwhile, in the newspaper advertising game, the NYTimes "print revenue slides" while "online glides." (via Cyberjournalist) However, Gillmor mentions the new online ad model for blogs that has folks talking, including Jeff Jarvis, who explains:

Gabe Rivera has created a new kind of advertising for TechMeme, which he explains here and here.

Simply put: He takes feeds of the latest posts from sponsors’ blogs and puts that in an ad box on Techmeme. That’s their ad. It’s brilliantly simple: dynamic advertising controlled by the advertisers, who will make their ads — their content — relevant to the readers who see their feeds on Techmeme. 

These are only a couple of the many stories out there on newspapers and Web ads, copyright content and more. I've so much more to report and link to, but …  

NOTICE: 

The MacBook I usually use for work is in the shop awaiting a new logic board, so between shuttling around machines, server issues (frequent) and more mishegas, expect some down time on this blog at least for a few days, though I say this more as a disclaimer than anything else. I'll still be posting at least a few things, most likely.