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February 14, 2007

Google Loses Copyright Case

Although the case was adjudicated in Belgium, the implications could be felt worldwide.

Google has lost a copyright lawsuit in Belgium brought on by a group of newspapers. The case was decided in favor of copyright protection group Copiepresse, composed of 17 mostly French-language newspapers.
The newspapers complained that Google breached copyrights by publishing headlines and links to news stories without permission. They also claimed Google's cached links allowed searchers to find and read past articles that were no longer available for free online. Google has been ordered to pay a retroactive fine for the days it used the content; the company said it will appeal the decision.

Remaining unresolved is the question of whether the linking Google does can be considered fair use. Consequently, expect to hear more on the issue in the future.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 04:17 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 139 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Google cache performs an important archiving function in light of the expanding practice of stealth editing of online news by major news organizations. This important feature should be maintained. I can see why news orgs want it stopped.

Posted by: Garrett at February 14, 2007 05:25 PM (6Hyks)

2 Google needs to police itself better. I just don't believe they put enough thought into their decisions. Also who is making the decisions. Shit! My son Scott just broke the bow flex. You can't do that. Excuxe me while I break a knuckle on his head.

Posted by: greyrooster at February 14, 2007 05:32 PM (MK5KV)

3 Greyrooster:
Sorry, you are incorrect in that aspect -- anyone who does not want to be cached by Google, or any other bot there is a one line change you can put in the header of your HTML:
meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOCACHE, NOARCHIVE"
This has been available for years, also the robots.txt webmasters can use to exclude google from coming to their site.
You are seeing lots of frivolous lawsuits aiming at Google, but they could stop Google archiving, or copying their content at anytime.
Try explaining that to the 74 year old Judge, that can't even use Email however.

Posted by: davec at February 14, 2007 07:05 PM (yaQM4)

4 Yeah, I wrote a law review article on copyright liability for hyperlinking (didn't get published because it was dull and everybody wanted Napster articles instead). The main point of the article is that lawyers are jackasses who don't understand html, and judges are too willing to create false analogies in their effort to shoehorn internet law into older precedent. I reserved a whole section for bashing several judges who wrote that 'clicking a hyperlink' was an action which 'transports the user to another place.'

Posted by: wooga at February 14, 2007 08:29 PM (t9sT5)

5 wooga:
I hear you there, one of my clients was involved in a lawsuit where the plaintiff claimed we were infringing on copyright on a public forum because people were loading pictures with "img src=" from their personal photobucket accounts, and the lawyers for the plaintiff put such a spin on it that the Judge believed everything they said.

I also dislike how Lawyers can pick and choose which law to sue you with; they didn't bother with the DMCA, they filed directly against my client using the 1976 copyright act as a contributory infringer, even though the DMCA would exclude us ;/

Posted by: davec at February 14, 2007 10:36 PM (yaQM4)

6 Google was dumb not to require "opt in". Just take the "No's" out of meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOCACHE, NOARCHIVE"

Posted by: Phillep at February 15, 2007 12:39 AM (/3s/n)

7 Phillep, sorry but Google didn't make the standard, w3c did, just as they did with the robots exclusion standard.

http://www.w3.org/Search/9605-Indexing-Workshop/ReportOutcomes/Spidering.txt

So, no Google wasn't dumb. They were just following the standards for the Web.

Posted by: davec at February 15, 2007 12:51 AM (yaQM4)

Davec: Thy telling that to a 65 year old who doesn't understand e-mail. Like me.

Posted by: greyrooster at February 15, 2007 08:49 AM (Lddpk)

9 "Thy" telling that to someone who is literate. Stupid old man.

Posted by: osamabinhiding at February 21, 2007 03:50 PM (ZxuJ4)

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February 14, 2007

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