BigDave - 5:08 pm on May 29, 2005 (gmt 0)

Dave, you obviously know your stuff with respect to US copyright law (but there is a world outside the US). What would be the legal position (in your opinion) in the following situation?

Kaled, there might be a world outside the US, what does that have to do with the situation under discussion, which is strictly an issue of what is going on in the US?

A group of US libraries, working with a US corporation, copy materials grom mostly US publishers and authors, and a US group of publishers with a US based lawyer contacts the US corporation.

It sure aounds like it is the relevant law to at least start with.

As for that "following situation", you should have hired an IP lawyer who would have told you to get a patent which would have been much more important.

But on to your questions

Has Google broken copyright law? What penalty might be applied if it were proven?

That depends. First there would be a battle over venue, and which country's copyright law will apply. Where You live has nothing to do with the appropriate venue, it is where the alleged infringement occurred.

As I have said earlier in this thread, I am not totally convinced by the legal arguments on either side on the cached content issue. And neither are any lawers that I have ever heard comment on it.

It would have to be brought to court and actually tried. The thing is, that no one seems to be willing to risk their own money to bring this to court, even though lots of people talk tough. It might be because their lawyers talk them out of it.

Has the Chinese student broken copyright law? If yes, how might it be proven and what what penalty is likely to apply?

Almost certainly not, unless he redistributes it. And even if he did, it would be almost impossible to prosecute. You would have to figure out which country is the correct location to prosecute from, and somehow force that student to that country and keep them there for that civil trial.

Though Google has only served one whole copy of the paper, it has served snippets with adverts thousands of times and received, in total, $1000.00 in revenue. Has Google broken copyright law? What penalty might be applied if it were proven?

In the United States? Almost certainly not. I would also suspect not in the UK either.

I decide to sue Google, and it transpires in court that my ex-wife hacked my website allowing Googlebot access to the paper. Has my ex-wife broken copyright law? What penalty might be applied if it were proven?

Probably not, other than for any DMCA type anti-circumvention laws your country might have.

You should talk to whatever your UK version of a DA is about bringing her up on criminal charges for cracking your website, and sue her for damages of her actions.

But that isn't a copyright violation.

The student builds a teleport and sells the design for $10,000,000,000. If he had downloaded the paper legitimately, he would have had to agree to split this in half with me but since he downloaded it from Google he was not obliged to make such an agreement.

That "agreement" would have no weight in any law that I am aware of. The way you protect ideas is with patents. If you don't patent it, no click through license in the world will protect you.

Now, we can see that Google has harmed me financially. Does this change your legal opinions above?

What "legal opinions" is it supposed to change?

Since we are talking about the cached pages, here is what I said:

What they are doing is definitely walking the line, and they certainly might even be stepping over that line. The same goes for serving up cached pages, and even offering framed content in google images. I think it is quite conceivably possible for someone to take them to court and win a pretty significant judgement against them.

and

If you go and look at Google's "cached" copies of pages, you will notice that they serve no adds, provide attribution, and very much limit any credit to themselves. They do that so that they are greatly limiting their own exposure under the first test. I'm still not convinced that it is completely legal, but I understand their position.

Was your little story supposed to convince me that cached pages are absolutely legal? Or that they are absolutely illegal?

My opinion is that someone will have to risk their own money to take google to court to decide the issue. That is what it was before, and what it still is.

Or were you attributing a opinion to me that I never voiced? That seems to be quite common in these copyright discussions when I point out the law and flaws in people's arguments.

If there is a statement of mine that you have problems with, please quote it to me and tell me why. Also look at what else I wrote to put it into context and actually think about it a little with an open mind first.