Google Relents, Posts Belgian Ruling

Google Inc. posted a Belgian legal ruling on its website Monday after initially refusing to comply with a court order in its loss of a copyright lawsuit.

The Sept. 5 ruling appears on the Google website in French. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company failed last week to win a suspension of the order to post the ruling. Google said Friday that it wouldn’t post the document while it fought the decision.

“We looked carefully at what the court said on Friday and then decided to post the ruling to our home page rather than try and appeal this decision,” Google spokesman D.J. Collins said.

The ruling this month stems from a lawsuit by Belgian newspapers that said Google violated their copyrights by showing their stories on the Google News site. Under threat of 1 million-euro ($1.28-million) daily fines, Google said Sept. 18 that it removed links to 15 newspapers. The court also ordered Google to post the terms of the judgment on its Belgian website for five days or face more fines.

Google plans to appeal both parts of the court’s ruling, the company said. A hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 25.

Google says its mission “is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” according to the company’s website. That has brought it into conflict with publishers including McGraw-Hill Cos. and Pearson, which are suing Google for making portions of books available online.