“Music first launched on Google Play in Europe in November 2012, and the fast rollout to more countries today is due to the multi-territorial licensing process, as recommended by the European Commission last year,” explains Google Play head of international music partnerships, Sami Valkonen. “We have 14 multi-territorial licenses for composition rights covering Europe and representing the vast majority of the world’s music, and have recently welcomed the members of AKM/AUME in Austria, SABAM in Belgium, SPA in Portugal, and IMRO in Ireland into our growing list of author’s society partners.”

Google is also launching Artist Hub in these countries. This is a platform for independent musicians to sell their music directly to fans. This is discussed a bit more here.

In addition to the five new countries, Google Play Music is available in the following European countries: the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

Now, however, Google has made an agreement which could have ramifications for how publishers in other countries proceed.

Google put out a blog post about the agreement, painting the whole thing as a win win situation, but it may not be that simple. While it may not have been as bad as it could have been for Google, it’s likely a bigger win for publishers. Jeff John Roberts at PaidContent points to some other reports, raising a pretty interesting point. He writes:

Google’s announcement says the parties are “collaborating” to make money but also takes pains to note that “we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services”. Oh, really?

US press outlets have noted Google is paying all the legal fees but have generally framed the deal as a tie or a win for Google. The Europeans, however, have been less gracious. Le Monde‘s triumphant account begins by explaining that the Belgian papers “forced Google to bend” and that Google will “compensate” papers and journalists to the tune of “2 to 3 percent of sales” — or “around 5 million euros” ($6.5 million).

As he notes, it seems very likely that publishers in other countries who have been fighting similar battles (albeit not always in the same fashion) will pursue similar payoffs. Google, as it mentioned in its blog post, will also be advertising heavily on publishers’ sites, giving them who knows how much more in revenue, though the company says publishers will also be using Google’s ad products.

In the post, Google Belgium Managing Director Thierry Geerts said, “Many win-win ways exist for Google and publishers to join forces in the new digital universe. We drive traffic to publishers – four billion clicks a month around the globe, offering publishers 100,000 business opportunities per minute. Our AdSense program pays out $7 billion a year to web publishers worldwide. Publishers remain free, with the addition of just a few lines of code, to pull out of Google web search and Google News. Publishers also remain free to determine whether to put their articles discovered through Google search behind a paywall.”

“Instead of continuing to argue over legal interpretations, we have agreed on the need to set aside past grievances in favour of collaboration,” he added. “This is the same message we would like to send to other publishers around the world – its much more beneficial for us to work together than to fight.” (Emphasis ours)

Google just may be sending a message to publishers indeed. It just might not be quite as rosy as the one painted in Google’s announcement.

This, as you may know, is a pretty standard fight for Google from country to country, as publishers seek more money for their content throughout the world. Some countries in Europe have proposed laws that would require Google to pay publishers to license content for this purpose, something Google is obviously completely against. In Brazil, publishers have pulled out of Google News on their own.

In Belgium, they’ve worked things out.

“We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation and represents great news for both us and the newspapers,” said Thierry Geerts, Managing Director, Google Belgium. “We continue to believe that our services respect newspaper copyrights and it is important to note that we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services.”

Google will advertise its services on the publishers’ media, and publishers will optimize their use of AdWords, Google says, adding that it will work with Belgian French-language publishers to help increase publishers’ revenue, collaborating on way to make money with Paywalls and subscriptions, and with AdSense and the AdExchange. Google says it will also work with publishers to implement Google+ social tools, including Hangouts on news sites, and launching YouTube channels. Finally, Google and publishers will collaborate on the distribution of original content on tablets and smartphones.

“This agreement comes at an important moment, in the midst of a debate how best the newspaper industry should adapt to the new digital age,” says Geerts. “As the Economist recently reported under the enticing headline, Letting the Baby Dance, many governments including Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, UK and Canada are considering or have gone ahead with Internet-friendly copyright reforms. At the same time, some European countries including Germany and France are considering an extension of copyright protection to excerpts of newspaper articles appearing in search engines’ results. The European Journalism Centre recently outlined why both Google and newspapers would be best off cooperating and The Reach Group published independent research reaching a similar conclusion.”

“We agree,” he adds. “Many win-win ways exist for Google and publishers to join forces in the new digital universe. We drive traffic to publishers – four billion clicks a month around the globe, offering publishers 100,000 business opportunities per minute. Our AdSense program pays out $7 billion a year to web publishers worldwide. Publishers remain free, with the addition of just a few lines of code, to pull out of Google web search and Google News. Publishers also remain free to determine whether to put their articles discovered through Google search behind a paywall.”

Google has indicated it would like to come to similar terms with publishers around the world.

The 2012 EUhackathon has brought some of the best coders in the world together in Brussels, Belgium. This year’s goal is to increase children’s safety online, while also increasing their online creativity. Corporate sponsors of the event include Google, Facebook, Orange, and Vodafone, all of which have sent engineers to the hackathon. The event is part of the European Commission’s Better Internet for Kids initiative. European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes, who is known for her pro-internet stances on web openness and net neutrality, prepared a short statement of encouragement for the hackathon participants:

Marco Pancini, senior policy manager at Google Brussels, announced in a post on the European Public Policy Blog that Google will be hosting the event at its offices in Brussels. This will be the second EUhackathon Google has hosted. Last year’s hackathon was centered around bringing more transparency to the internet. Pancini stated that, since children are the focus of this year’s hackathon, it is only appropriate that children are participants. From the blog post:

Children are central to this latest EUhackathon and are being given the opportunity to participate in the competition. Our youngest hacker is 13 years old! A total of 25 teenagers from the European schools in Brussels, aged between 12 and 15, will assist, participate and get first hand experience of computer coding.

A Jury made up of representatives from the corporate sponsors, figures from European agencies, children, and a teacher will be judging the work at the hackathon. Kroes will be awarding two winning teams, one for the safety track and one for the creativity track, on June 21. The winning teams will receive €5,000 each.

The ruling involves a case brought against Netlog, an online social network based in Belgium, by a music royalties firm claiming that the site, in addition to other social networks, should be scouring the content posted by users in order to “ensure it does not infringe copyright.” Sabam, the aforementioned royalties firm, dragged in the dead horse argument that “some” of Netlog’s users had been sharing copyright protected music and videos on the website.

The European Court of Justice, however, wasn’t shopping for worn out excuses today. While acknowledging that the requested anti-privacy measure would remedy Sabam’s problem, the action “would not be respecting the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to intellectual property, on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business, the right to protection of personal data and the freedom to receive or impart information, on the other.” Moreso, the court recognized that requiring sites to implement an anti-piracy filter “could potentially undermine freedom of information” as well as act as a “serious infringement of the freedom” of Netlog.

Smell that? Sounds like somebody just got served a hot plate of justice.

Of course, would the court to have ruled in the other direction, the reverberations would assuredly been felt on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Because that’s the direction this slippery slope falls and thankfully the court saw the danger of persecuting the ostensible pirates sharing music and movies on, god forbid, a social media site built for sharing things.

Hampton explained on the European Public Policy Blog, "Until now, our small policy team in Brussels worked from temporary abodes.  From now on, you can find us at Chausse d’Etterbeek 180 1040 Bruxelles, right in the heart of the European quarter."

A satellite view of the address makes it look like a very nice, green spot – exactly the sort of place you might expect Google to set up camp.  Unfortunately, Street View’s not available in the area to allow for a closer inspection.

Details about price, square footage, and other relevant stuff are also lacking (although Hampton promised that bright, Google-y furniture is on hand, along with a number of game consoles).

Anyway, it would appear that this move signals a real intent on Google’s part to become and stay involved in European politics.  Hampton wrote, "We hope to make our new Brussels Googleplex a periscope for policymakers peering into the future of the Internet."

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“Keio University became the latest partner to join Google Books Library Project, and our first library partner in Japan,” states Laura DeBonis, Director of Google’s Book Search Library Partnerships.  “Working together, Google and the Keio University Library will digitize at least 120,000 public domain books . . . so that readers around the world can view, browse, read, and even download public domain materials by simply searching online at books.google.co.jp.”

DeBonis then notes that would-be users “can also search these books by typing your search term in Japanese on books.google.com.”

This is all part of Google’s effort “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” – many other recent Library Project partnerships have also involved countries in which English is not the dominant language.  (See examples in Belgium, Switzerland, and India, if you’re interested.)

Professor S. Sugiyama, Director of the Keio University Library, also emphasized global matters with his comment on the Inside Google Book Search Blog.  “The Google project allows us to make our collections visible worldwide, allowing us to contribute to research and education on a global scale,” he wrote.

Professor Sugiyama continues, “Our university was founded in 1858 by Yukichi Fukuzawa, who was well known for his commitment to bringing information and media forward into the modern age.  This makes Keio ideally suited to be the first Japanese library to participate in Google Book Search.”

Hat tip to Bloomberg’s Ari Levy.

Google Fights Back With Copiepresse Appeal

Google doesn’t lose in court very often, but they took what for them equated to a humbling beating from Copiepresse last year. Copiepresse won a judgment against Google for indexing news content from websites it represents.

That decision included forcing Google to post the judgment for five days on its Belgian portal. The company did so, in a small font size, and their subsequent posts on their official blog made it clear they weren’t happy about this.

Google and Copiepresse subsequently reached a partial settlement of their differences. But a complete resolution will have to wait for an appeals process to take place.

A Bloomberg report about the case found from Google that an appeal had been filed ten days ago. This won’t interrupt their ongoing negotiations with Copiepresse, however.

Google believes its use of small excerpts of news content in Google News complies with copyright laws. A Belgian court disagreed, finding “no exception” in their laws for this, the report said.

As for that geographical sequence, I simply thought a little perspective might be needed before diving into this article; our guide, you’ll see, is much more familiar with both the area and the subject at hand.

Emmanuel Begerem, a Consumer Support Associate at Google, writes, “As an alumnus of Ghent University, I am thrilled that the university has decided to open its historic and special collections to the world.  Ghent University has always striven for innovation and it hit a new milestone today by becoming the first Dutch-language library to join the Library Project.”

And once again, some perspective might be needed, so Begerem explains, “This joint project will allow researchers, students and users from all around the world to search, browse and read the incredible collection of public domain books the university has to offer.”

That “all around the world” descriptor also applies to where the project is finding its sources; in the past six days, Google has made book-related deals in Switzerland and India, in addition to the new partnership in Belgium.  Of course, unless you’re fluent in those countries’ native languages, or feel like suffering through a questionable translation, you’re out of luck, but the Google Library Project is still doing some undeniably impressive things.

An AP report out of the Belgian capital said the two sides are enjoying “constructive dialogue” following their contentious courtroom battle. Copiepresse accused Google of infringing on the rights of the papers it manages.

Rather than simply placing a relevant robots.txt file on the web servers for the papers in question, Copiepresse took Google to court. Copiepresse’s win forced Google to post a notice about it on their Belgian home page for five days.

The two sides have made a statement about the recent change. They jointly said in the report that Google could reference Copiepresse-managed content. However, Google will not be archiving copies of stories.

“The Belgian French and German-language daily press publishers and Google Inc. intend to use a quiet period in the court dispute to continue their efforts to identify tangible ways to collaborate in the long term,” they said in the report.

Copiepresse charges people to access older articles, a practice used in the US by papers like the New York Times. The use of the no-archive meta tag will keep Google from caching articles appearing on Copiepresse news websites.