French blog aggregates say "adieu" to links

Interesting development overseas...the French courts have ruled against a blog aggregate site, Fuzz, for printing a link pointing to an article containing details of the private life of actor Olivier Martinez. In typical French hyperbole, this judgment is being called "a black day for the French web." The courts held the website editor, Eric Dupin, liable for collecting and publishing links to articles of questionable validity, even though he didn't initially write the articles. (For those of you not familiar with Fuzz, it's similar to any aggregate site, such as Digg.) One of the reasons this story is interesting: the French court is saying that blog aggregators have the same level of journalistic responsibility as writers of original content. If you can read French, you can find more details in Le Figaro.

-posted by Rachel