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Google Loses Cache-Copyright Lawsuit in Belgium
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Feb 13, 2007 09:51 AM
from the no-convenience-for-you dept.
from the no-convenience-for-you dept.
acroyear writes "A court in Belgium has found that Google's website caching policies are a violation of that nation's copyright laws. The finding is that Google's cache offers effectively free access to articles that, while free initially, are archived and charged for via subscriptions. Google claims that they only store short extracts, but the court determined that's still a violation. From the court's ruling: 'It would be up to copyright owners to get in touch with Google by e-mail to complain if the site was posting content that belonged to them. Google would then have 24 hours to withdraw the content or face a daily fine of 1,000 euros ($1,295 U.S.).'"
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Har Har (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Har Har (Score:5, Informative)
"To prevent all search engines from showing a "Cached" link for your site, place this tag in the <HEAD> section of your page:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
To allow other search engines to show a "Cached" link, preventing only Google from displaying one, use the following tag:
<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE"> "
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Waffles (Score:5, Funny)
That's unfortunate (Score:3, Interesting)
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to copy content to your local machine to index it, and to be abel to select results with context. Hell, you have to copy it to *VIEW* it.
The courts and the law need to wake up and realize you can't do anything with a computer without copying it a dozen times. 25% or more of what your computer does is copy things from one place (network, hard drive, memory, external media) to another.
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Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not in terms of copyright law (Score:5, Insightful)
Google: Hey, what that page? Can I see? (HTTP GET)
Them
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Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
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robots.txt (Score:4, Insightful)
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Give them a choice. (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that Google is in a good position now to offer a deal to sites; they can either agree to be crawled, and thus end up in a cache for 30 days or whatever, or they can just not end up in the index at all. Their option.
Get rid of the "oh we want to be in the index and get traffic, but not be cached" option, which is basically web sites wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
I think these sites have an inflated opinion of their own relevance to the world. They can sue Google, but Google can effectively remove them from the Internet, at least as far as 70-90 [skrenta.com]% (depending on who's doing the counting) of users are concerned.
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$1,295 per day? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$1,295 per day? (Score:5, Funny)
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What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
FWIW, I hate the entire idea of copyright, I'm just trying to show how Google has to act in court.
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The web page is publicly accessible for free to begin with. That complicates things quite a bit.
2) The ruling from the court doesn't say Google needs to stop caching, it just says that Google has to provide an opt-out. That option already exists.
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good answer.
This ruling doesn't significantly hurt Google. Alas, it only hurts everyone else -- all billion or so of Google's users. Having quick access to (at least a chunk of) a piece of content, especially when that content has expired or is temporarily unreachable, is convenient and valuable. Many times in my own searches, the piece of data I anxiously sought was available only in the cache.
Let's hope that Google does not respond to the ruling by across-the-board reducing or removing the cache feature.
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Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that is true, then why do I see copyright statements at the beginning of books and DVDs? It would seem the publishers are being hypocritical - they post their content publicly, refuse to use the robots.txt file, and then go on a litigation rampage when someone actually makes use of their web site. They're little different than the kid who takes his ball and goes home when he starts losing the game.
Furthermore, I would argue that posting to a web page is implied permission because the owners do so expecting their work to be copied to personal computers. In an interesting turn of events, private individuals are allowed to copy and archive web pages, but Google is not.
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Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
But this isn't just copying to a personal computer, it's copying and redistributing in a modified form while passing on some of the expense to the original host site and concealing information that the original host site would otherwise have received.
Individuals aren't, in general, allowed to redistribute entire works subject to others' copyright either.
As an aside, I also don't have a problem with a commercial corporation not automatically having the same rights as a private citizen. The world would be a better place if more legal systems understood that they are not the same.
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the web, caching search engines have been in existence for a lot longer than expiring content has been around. It's established that search engines are a neccesity, and that robots.txt is the way to opt-out. When you do business in a new arena, it makes sense that the existing rules of the arena should apply.
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE"
All of my website (quaggaspace.org) shows up in google, but you'll notice there is no "cached" button.
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Here is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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THE INTERNET DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
You did "opt in," by broadcasting your shit on the Internet in the first place!
Don't like it? Don't upload it! Why is that simple concept so fucking hard to understand?!
I mean, jeez -- don't you realize that what you're saying is equivalent to yelling in my ear and then complaining that I heard you?
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Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is.... newspapers, wanna have their pie and eat it too.
Solution.... it's Google's fault.
Result.... news dinosaurs go extinct and news mammals come to rule Earth
Moral.... don't be greedy beyond survival.
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24 hours! (Score:3, Funny)
I think it is safe to say they can afford to take their time...
Why are newspapers retarded? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm Google, I turn the morons off and see how fast they come screaming back when their ad revenue plummets. Seriously, IT'S FREE FREAKING ADVERTISING. Google should be charging *them*.
You suck at teh internets. This is about the "google cache" link supplied on Google's search results page.
No, he makes a good point. If someone files a lawsuit against Google, all Google would have to do to stop them would be to suspend their site from all indexing and search results. There's no God-given right to be indexed by a search engine. Bad analogy; imagine you sell hot meaty pies, and some random guy walks around the town carrying a board with the words, "Eat Anonymous Coward's Hot Meaty Pies Today!!!". Now imagine that guy does it for free. Suing Google is somewhat like taking the guy to court
Content providers may shoot themselves... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't believe that Google currently is mandated to show users any particular results. The simplest technological solution for Google might be to drop indexing the sites that send these takedown notices entirely. No index, no cache; dump it all and don't look back.
They are in no way legally bound to do come up with a more advanced solution that would be more $$ and add more complexity to the codebase.
Now because there very well may be information that is unavailable anywhere else (although it seems relatively unlikely - yes, they might have copyrighted articles that are unavailable otherwise, but I cannot imagine the information contained therein is such, unless you're talking about creative works) Google may try to work something out. Oh, that and they are remarkably not evil compared to the power they currently wield.
Imagine how many takedown notices they would receive after the first few rounds of companies that complained cannot be found through Google...
Oblig Monty Python Reference (Score:5, Funny)
Abstracts are illegal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Abstracts are generally a) uninformative and b) free. Seems like a huge overreaction on the EU's part.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Abstract" and "extract" are not interchangeable terms.
An abstract is a meta-description of a document, giving an overview of its content but usually not using any of the document content itself. An extract, on the other hand, is a literal subset of the document.
Extend robots.txt? (Score:4, Insightful)
Implications for proxies (Score:3, Informative)
Good, I don't want to find that! (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope Google removes these sites totally. Then, as written by others too, we need a law that says that the ones putting stuff on the web has to write correct HTML and robot.txt files if they don't want their content cached. Google can't manually go through every site on the web and it would be even more impossible for Google's smaller competitors.
Just Pull Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Caching is Copying (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have news for you. When you stream your browser makes a local copy of portions of the stream, decodes them, and displays them.
If sampling is illegal (without permission) then clearly copying a portion of a video stream without permission would be illegal. However, since you can give permission to anyo
Re:Caching is Copying (Score:4, Interesting)
You are confused. Caching is fine. Searching is fine. Wholesale republication of cached pages without prior permission (i.e. Googles "cached version" link) is not fine.
Want proof? Try "caching" a prominent website on your own site and see how fast you get sued. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Google can republish cached pages and mere mortals cannot, that's class justice.
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Simple really (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't believe that anyone has added "being indexed" to human rights yet.
D
waiting for google to *switch off* a country.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't imagine the Belgian public putting up for long with completely losing access to Google simply because their copyright laws were written in another century..
Here's how to fix the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
This page is cached, but your government officials will not let you read it. Here are their names and addresses, and the date of the next election, and the challengers to them who have signed a document that they will reverse this ruling if elected:
Censor: Hercule Poirot
Free Speech Challenger: Agatha Christie
Next election for them: 18 Aug 2007
Censor: Phinneas d'Satay
Free Speech Challenger: Mannequin Pisse
Next election for them: 18 Aug 2007
etc.
Tailor it per local region if that can be determined from the IP.
9) Wait a few years
10) Profit!
Re:Personal Responsibility (Score:4, Informative)
THIS is the correct tag:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">
Sorry about the brain fart. I wish we could edit posts (preview, I know, but that would not have made me catch this one)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Personal Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What about MY memory, is that a cache? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, you have to bribe your way to a victory just like everywhere else!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't that undermine the GPL? If the linux kernel is in the public domain, companies could use it freely without having to give back.
Or what about street-performers performing their own material?
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, perhaps its good that the rest of the world doesn't see it the way you do.
Because if the world were to be the way you see it, the entire web content industry would immediately go pay-per-view or subscription only to avoid all their work becoming public domain. Yes, what you propose would literally destroy the useful and open environment of the Internet.
Servers, bandwidth, and writers don't pay for themselves. If these sites can be copied wholesale and put up elsewhere without the original author having a say in the matter, you've just destroyed any monetary incentive to create. Much as many people like to think otherwise, money is important, and a strong incentive to create.
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