• Bloomberg News via New York Times, Monday, November 27, 2006 11 AM

Google's under pressure overseas: in France, filmmakers are suing the company over the illegal appearance of their documentary about the Bush administration on Google Video, while a French news agency has ordered the removal of its links from Google News. In Italy, investigators want to know how the search giant allowed video of Italian teenagers beating up an autistic kid to surface on the same video site. And in Belgium, news reporters and photojournalists want compensation for the way Google News links to their news stories and displays their images.

With regard to the last case, there's been some closure: late last week, the search giant reached an out-of-court settlement with both Sofam, the organization representing nearly 4,000 photographers, and Scam, the group backing journalists, which now gives it "extensive use" of their content.

In September, of course, Google lost its initial copyright suit in Belgium against Copiepresse, a group representing French and German-language newspapers. As a result, Google had to take down more than 17 links to Belgian news sites. Agence-France Presse, France's equivalent of the Associated Press, also has an outstanding case with the Web giant over the use of its content in Google News.

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