Google sued over G News by AFP

seeks $17.5 million

[walkman]

"The French news service is seeking damages of at least $17.5 million and an order barring Google News from displaying AFP photographs, news headlines or story leads, according to the suit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "

[reuters.com...]

I don't see AFP winning. Copyright is not absolute, not in US anyway, and what G does I think falls under fair use. All they use is at most a sentence and a thumbnail

[luckychucky]

Google News also cites the source referent by name.
I mean, Google doesn't try to pass off other entities' news articles as their own creations. Right?

[Leosghost]

One neglects to include the books from the French National Library at ones peril ;)

Seriously ..about time ..and I hope they "AFP" win ..then maybe we can forget this " you want to keep us out you have to say so in your robots text " argument ..

Wonder if "G" put any in their "cache" aswell ..might aswell get all the "issues" sorted at once ..

[vik_c]

What's $17.5m to Google anyway...loose change :)

[diddlydazz]

What's $17.5m to Google anyway...loose change

agreed, i think the bad publicity will hurt Google more than the financial loss.

AFP alleged that Google has ignored such requests and as of the filing date of the lawsuit "continues in an unabated manner to violate AFP's copyrights."

surely Google are not that stupid?

It seems that Google needs to keep more of an eye on its european operations, they seem to be spending most of their time in court :O)

dazz

[walkman]

what's $17.5 mil? a lot of money. If AFP wins, everyone else will sue..

I think Google ignored them because they don't feel like they violated the copyright

[luckychucky]

Apparently the crux of the complaint that AFP is one of the many awful media creatures who require subscriber LogIn in order to access full text of an article. After you click the thumbnail, Goog displays the full article text with no LogIn required.

(me, I use bugmenot anyway...)

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