communitynews - 5:38 am on Feb 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

Some good points, figment88. Here's my thoughts on them.

1) I'm not even sure search is fair-use. How come search engines get to live in an opt-out world where all other copyright issues are opt-in?

A derivative work that uses only parts of a copyrighted work can be fair use. I think this applies because they only display the title and a snippet.

2) discussions of page caching are legendary

Not sure on this one, perhaps it is illegal. The fact that there is a way to opt-out of caching probably isn't enough. Google probably would be required to remove it if someone with enough bucks wanted to push it with the legal system, although DMCA may protect them. I'll bet if you sent google a DMCA notice they'd remove the cache. They'd probably ask you to use the NOARCHIVE thing but if you told them to stuff it and stop caching without the NOARCHIVE, they probably would.

3) Google groups - this is mind-boggling to me that they take my mindless ramblings from almost ten years ago and use them them to sell ads.

Not exactly sure on this one but it is probably like sending a letter to the editor of a newspaper, you know your work will be published. But I'm not sure.

4) Google images don't just abuse publishers content but encourage hotlinking by others

A derivative work [thumbnail] that uses only parts of a copyrighted work is fair use. The Betamax defense applies to the hotlinking. Because there is legit uses of google images you can't stop it because some use it illegaly.

5) GMail - some how it is supposed to be all right to scan my emails to customers and use the content to insert my competitors ads

The gmail user agrees to this so anything they send is ok to put ads in (if it doesn't contain others work?) but I don't know if they put ads in emails received. Good point.

6) Autolink, just a continuation of Google getting fat off others others' output.

I agree that Autolink is illegal and luckly the Betamax defense probably won't apply because the sole purpose of this feature is to create unauthorized derivative works.