Forum Moderators: goodroi
[eff.org...]
The Ninth Circuit Court has ruled that Google's Image Search thumbnails are fair use.
But they also ruled that Google is a "secondary infringer" having "actual knowledge" of sites with lifted duplicate content and turns a blind-eye to that behavior.
Today's decision reversed the lower court's holding that Google's thumbnails were not a fair use, following and bolstering an earlier image search engine precedent, Kelly v. Arriba Soft. The court rightly took into account the important public benefit that search engines provide -- not simply the impact on the particular parties in this case -- and what would serve copyright's fundamental goal of promoting access to creative works. While Google's transformative use of the image provided a very real public benefit, Perfect 10's potential loss of thumbnail licensing revenue was highly speculative.
