Copenhagen's lower bailiff's court ruled Friday that Newsbooster.com was in direct competition with the newspapers and that the links it provided to specific news articles damaged the value of the newspapers' advertisements.
The case was among the latest to challenge the Web's basic premise of encouraging the free flow of information through linking.
Requiring permission before linking could jeopardize online journals, search engines and other sites that link -- which is to say, just about every site on the Internet. Newsbooster.com immediately removed its links to 20 Danish newspapers that belong to the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association, which filed the complaint and welcomed the ruling.
"It would have been difficult for newspapers to do business if the bailiff's court had reached the opposite result," spokesman Ebbe Dal said.
"We're deeply shocked," said Anders Lautrup, the manager of Copenhagen-based Newsbooster.com. "I trust this will have consequences for search engines worldwide."
Newsbooster.com connects users to specific pages on the Internet rather than to a site's home page. It's much like a search engine -- subscribers choose keywords and other criteria, and the service returns a set of news articles that match the descriptions.
Unlike most search engines, though, Newsbooster charges a subscription fee and lets users choose to automatically receive links by e-mail.
The publishers association, whose members market their own Web sites, demanded that the group negotiate payments with them, or remove links to its sites.
Newsbooster.com retains links to about 4,480 newspapers worldwide.
"We have not heard one word from these foreign newspapers," Lautrup said.
He said Newsbooster.com would appeal the ruling, arguing it didn't steal information but simply made it easier to find for people who use the Web.
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