Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
[news.com.com...]
A Nevada federal court has ruled that the cached versions of Web pages that Google stores and offers as a part of many search results are not copyright infringement.
Clearly, the court did not understand what real caching is and what Google calls caching. I do not thing Googles meets the crieteria for caching:
The material described in paragraph (1) is transmitted to the subsequent users described in paragraph (1)(C) without modification to its content from the manner in which the material was transmitted from the person described in paragraph (1)(A) {FN104: 17 U.S.C. §512(b)(2)(A)}
What this does I think, is effectively neuters all copyright laws on the internet today. It is the wild-wild west again.
With all that Google has done that is good - I don't know how we could be so far apart on this one issue.
Blake Field: (who brought the suit):
[blakeswritings.com...]
If I take a printed flyer and put it in my shop window, am I beaching copyright if I haven't ascertained that the person asking me to display it was the originator of the document?
Probably not. But if you read that flyer aloud to a non-private gathering then you probably are. Remember, the rules are different for different media.
Playing a DVD for yourself, or for a private gathering is not a copyright infringement. Renting or loaning out that original is also okay under the first sale doctrine. Playing that DVD as part of a public performance is not okay.
TV stations cannot just go down to the local blockbuster and rent a movie to show. Radio stations have to pay additional royalties when they play music. The same goes for business that play music over a central sound system or have live performances.
even if many pontificate like US law applied planet wide
But when the thread is about a case in Nevada, the ONLY law that counts is US law.
Where their version of what they interpret as copyright law has always been in conflict with local laws and where they have flouted those laws since day one ..
Google is a registered business in Ireland and Switzerland to name but two other juristictions and as such is obliged to and should be respecting EU law with relation to copyright ( they are not doing so ) ..
An American companies spurious legal arguments and proprietory "opt out" tags and other doubtfull practices should not be imposed upon American websites ..and it's subsiduaries should not try to do the same elsewhere ..
Microsoft have learned this the hard way in the EU ..
Google may well be the next to be challenged and brought to heel to obey legislation as opposed to purely doing what suits it's bottom line ..
Your sidestepping of the wider issue does you no credit ..
This thread is about an american lawsuit, against an american company, by an american with a site hosed in the united states.
And somehow we are hijacking it by talking about american copyright law?
File your suit in france, and then the french law will count.
By the way, it doesn't really matter where the websites are hosted. If google were simply and american national company instead of a multi-national, the ONLY law that would apply to them would be US law. That is where the copies would be made, and where they would be hosted.
If google were simply and american national company instead of a multi-national, the ONLY law that would apply to them would be US law. That is where the copies would be made, and where they would be hosted.
so other laws do apply ..
and they do keep cached copies on their servers outside the states ..
of course if you think that only Americans should post on the subject ..and only as it affects American sites then I suppose Brett will have to change the site here to "continentalUSAwebmastersonly" ..
BTW ..I would not wish for french law to be the decider in this either ..you are confusing where I live with where I am from and which legal system I prefer ..
even if many pontificate like US law applied planet wide
Most of the general copyright discussion is relevant to any of the 160 countries that support the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
Google does this everywhere and International law ..not merely that of one single state in the US has to be the system applied ..or there is total justification for anyone to set up a search engine in any country or province ..such as the "Stans" that brett refers to in the WebmasterWorld robot text blog ..and we should all ( including big dave ) not complain or comment if our sites get scraped , cached or copied and framed with adsense on them ..
It's like when you try to apply your personal interperatation of US fair use to everyone else everywhere else in the world ..people do have websites , run searches and agree legislation with the US from outside the USA you know ..
you cant decide the rules for everyone else ..
EFV ..you need to read a lot more closely the Bern convention .there are massive differences ...and to reread a lot more of big daves old "fair use" as defined by US courts ..and how he never even acknowledges that there is life and other legislation outside of the USA that does not subscribe to his definition of "fair use" ..
presumably you would not mind if I stripped out the ads and the adsense from your site ( which wouldn't leave much per page ) and then translated it or "reveiwed it" and put up adsense on the "reveiw" ..quoting "fair use" a la big dave ;) ..or cached it and branded it on the top with my logos and so no -one needed to go to your site to read your text ;)..
I in fact aknowledge the appropraite copyright law for the case, in EVERY CASE under discussion. You on the other hand keep complaining every time there is discussion about a US case that we are only discussing US law.
Your complaining in a post is the ONLY reason that it came up. No one else mentioned international law before that point, yet somehow you became bothered that we were only discussing the law that actually applies to this case.
In that very Fair Use discussion you mention, I seem to recall where I showed you that you were wrong about UK copyright and you suddenely jumped to French law.
Give it a break. The law IN THIS CASE is United States Title 17. That is the law that applies in Nevada, it is the law that applies in the (th Circuit, and it is the law that applies in the entire United States.
You are bothered that we are not referring to the EU laws in a discussion about a United States case, yet you don't want to be bothered to learn the law that applies.
Give it a break.
For someone that claims to be such an expert on copyright, I would highly recommend that you get familiar with it (your last post makes it obvious that you are not) or follow your own advice and not post on an issue that you are not familiar
This thread is hosed.
Caches generally contain an unmodified copy of the original. The Google archive is modified and branded and certainly doesn't qualify as a cache. It even contains a bookmark link that points back to Google and not the original owner.
If that ok with you, then surely any site that archives your content in a similar fashion and republishes it under their own brand should be perfectly acceptable to you.
If you don't believe that search engines archiving your site hurts you, legalities aside, consider this. In the future, search engines will data mine their archives to produce advertiser supported, content rich articles to appease their visitor's search queries. Each article derived from information scraped from potentially thousands of archived pages and pieced together by artificial intelligence software. Your site won't be receive credit for it's contribution and your site won't benefit from the revenue collected from the ad revenue. You may even lose a potential visitor.
Since you like to talk as if you have a great deal of authority on this topic, I'd be very interested to know just why I should take anything you say as anything more than simple opinion flavored by some fact and background knowledge.
Since you are guaranteed to be jumping into any copyright thread presenting yourself as if you are a practicing expert in the field, it would be nice to know for once and for all just what your actual expertise in this area is.
No need to get specific, just a general answer would be nice. You'll have to pardon my scepticism here.
Of course the simple fact of being an attorney doesn't mean much either, but at least it would give us some idea.
In point of fact Google themselves seem to accept this - they offer an opt-out mechanism, and this was, indeed, cited by the judge in the Nevada case.
However, the opt-out mechanism is flawed in principle and in implementation in that it only applies to html files, yet Google archives other formats such as PDF and TXT files.
I, like many other people, feel that it is only a matter of time before Google either changes this policy voluntarily or is forced to do so by the courts.
Kaled.
It was 4am in the morning and I managed to get engaged in an argument with a few people across the world! What a wonderful age we live in!
Kaled, I feel your post is a great summary to this debate;
Enough people (seems like at least 40-50% on this topic in this forum) seem to feel there is a copyright violation by Google re-publishing (displaying/storing/showing whatever) other peoples webpages from their site.
That is enough to guarantee that Google will be before more courts in the future (and in different countries) and therefor only time will tell what will happen - though if they want to maintain the whole 'don't be evil' theme then pissing off 50% of their listings webmasters surely wouldn't fit the bill ;-)
Has anyone got anything new to bring to this debate?
That is enough to guarantee that Google will be before more courts in the future (and in different countries) and therefor only time will tell what will happen - though if they want to maintain the whole 'don't be evil' theme then pissing off 50% of their listings webmasters surely wouldn't fit the bill ;-)
Just because 50% of the participants in this thread are upset by the Google cache doesn't mean 50% of site owners in general are upset. And of those who are are Web-savvy enough to even be aware of the cache and have an opinion on it, are there any who don't know they can opt out with a simple tag?
That's the crux of the matter. And until there's a groundswell of protest or a stampede of angry Webmasters armed with lawyers, Google will continue to assume (not unreasonably) that most Webmasters believe its cache is "fair use" that benefits both the Web site and the public.
Is this a breach of copyright in anyones mind, considering it is not blocked by any opt-out tags and they get more Gmail users and advertising revenue from persons sending your content?
It requires users are signed in and MUST have a gmail account for it to work, which will then ensure you most likely get Googles adsense adds placed around the outside at some point. (In fact half the features on the toolbar need you to be signed in with a google account of some sort).
This one REQUIRES you have gmail as the sending account (meaning more signups from people wanting to email your content?)... any opinions?
EFV - I have given up arguing over this matter, and simply take it that there is obviously passionate people on both sides of the fence in this debate.
I made my opinions clear earlier and am not going to go round and round in circles... I think it will wind up in court again. PS My mother knows of the cache and she is far from websavy ;-)
I made my opinions clear earlier and am not going to go round and round in circles... I think it will wind up in court again.
Only if unhappy Webmasters do something besides talk about it. :-)
europeforvisitors:
Only if unhappy Webmasters do something besides talk about it. :-)
It really looks like they are going to do so: the World Association of Newspapers (representing 18.000 newspapers worldwide) is researching how they can make Google and Yahoo pay for the content they are stealing.
When they go to court (and I really hope they will) it sure won't be in Nevada...
A good way to act would be: sue them in every country or deparment where they are stealing content, because that's the crime scene.
I don't understand why people keep mentioning opting-out: I just saw a brand new Mercedes and it didn't have a special sign on both the front and back side saying "don't ride this if it isn't yours, not even when you really really like it". I have asked Mercedes-owners to put such a sign on their car to prefent me stealing it. Do I now have the right to take every Mercedes without that special sign?
My opinion FWIW
This will end up in more courts, it is far from over (although it may be in Nevada).
The way I would like to see all this end?
In order of preference:
Make it opt-in not opt-out period (the best option IMO)
or.....
don't let the public see it.
or.....
get rid of the google/msn/yahoo logo (as that logo sitting there is branding, no 2 ways about it), and google should get rid of the bookmark link as IMHO it is a bit too much.
DISCLAIMER
no im not a lawyer, not related to one (AFAIK), the only lawyers i have contact with are the ones I have to pay, oh, and my dog never studied copyright law nor has he felt the need to.
But I have sent out 100's of C&Ds in my time!
Dazz
I just saw a brand new Mercedes and it didn't have a special sign on both the front and back side saying "don't ride this if it isn't yours, not even when you really really like it". I have asked Mercedes-owners to put such a sign on their car to prefent me stealing it. Do I now have the right to take every Mercedes without that special sign?
No, because joyriding isn't protected by Fair Use.
In this particular instance the cached copy of a web page is:
1: Not required to be publicly avialible for the web page to function.
2: Not required to be publicly availible for Google's system to function.
3: Not required to be publicly availible for Google to function as an ISP.
4: Not required to be publicly availible for Google to function as a hosting provider.
IMO the Judge got it wrong. The website owner also didn't exactly help in the matter.
I have no doubt that the matter will be back in court somewhere.
No, because joyriding isn't protected by Fair Use.
Republicing whole pages/articles isn't either. At least not in civilised countries. If I publish an article you may use quotes from it (put a snippet and a title in your search engine or on your web page, that's fair use) but you're sure not allowed to republish the whole thing. You'll have to ask me first, and I tell you under which conditions (financial and otherwise) I will or will not allow you to do so.
Republicing whole pages/articles isn't either. At least not in civilised countries. If I publish an article you may use quotes from it (put a snippet and a title in your search engine or on your web page, that's fair use) but you're sure not allowed to republish the whole thing.
It isn't that simple, and the copyright owner doesn't get to define what "fair use" is. That's up to the courts. And for now, Google and other SEs that use caching obviously feel comfortable with the opinions of their own legal experts.
It's worth noting that no entrepreneurial class-action attorneys have tried to drum up interest in a lawsuit about caching. This doesn't necessarily mean that Google is in the right, but on a strictly practical level, it may mean that Google doesn't have too much to worry about.
[edited by: europeforvisitors at 5:26 pm (utc) on Feb. 1, 2006]
IMO the Judge got it wrong.
IMO it's a bit presumptuous to assert that the judge "got it wrong"
Does anyone have anything constructive to say that hasn't been said already?
Kaled.
It would not be the first time that a Judge called it wrong.
I was kind enough to state that it was an opinion on my part.
I also stated why I thought that fair use did not apply.
The ruling was on an exteremely narrow basis and is still subject to review. Let's let it play out and then see.
I happen to admire this particular Judge for other reasons outside of this case.
kaled,
;-)
Does anyone have anything constructive to say that hasn't been said already?
Oh yes, something quite interesting. Something that would explain the thoroughness of the decision, and something that might give an ever-so-tiny ray of hope to those that want this decision overturned.
But since 2by4 seems to think I'm not qualified to give my opinion, I think I'll keep my research to myself.
It's basic case research, so I'm sure that someone else (such as 2by4 or leosghost) will come up with it. It just requires a few searches and some simple critical thinking about how appeals work.
Will that do for starters?
