French News Agency Sues Google News 441
n1ywb writes "CNN and others are reporting that 'News agency Agence France Presse has sued Google Inc., alleging the Web search leader includes AFP's photos, news headlines and stories on its news site without permission. 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 Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.' This means they're suing in America this time, not France, which means Google might actually care if they lose."
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:5, Interesting)
Damages? (Score:5, Interesting)
AFP pictures on Yahoo! too (Score:1, Interesting)
one of two, Yahoo! took it legal or France hates google
Why would you attack Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this different from /.? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Security! Security! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IANAL, but don't news agencies and aggregators (Score:3, Interesting)
If Google does not, then by providing excerpts for a non-editorial, non-educational, and rather commercial purpose they may be unfairly infringing.
I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
AFP = plaguerisism of AP and REUTERS (Score:1, Interesting)
Sounds like a frivilous attempt to get-rich-quick on Google's amazing success which has now reached global recognition, as demonstrated by the AFP's sad endeavor to gain financially over something so unimportant.
Yahoo pays AFP for news (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo's AFP news site:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=1504 [yahoo.com]
AFP (Score:2, Interesting)
A bunch of stupid ass holes.
and yes, I'm french
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:3, Interesting)
(hint: it's about the same as the probability of Windows XP getting GPL'ed by the end of the year)
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:5, Interesting)
Google links to publicly accessible content hosted on publicly accessible websites, period.
AFP posts content to their publicly accessible website, and lo and behold it's linked to.
If AFP doesn't like the way they're doing business, then they should change it. I think they'd be hard pressed to be a successful news service though if they refused access to all of their news.
As has already been aluded to, this is so SCO it's not even funny. There is no case.
Now, even given that, maybe the best thing Google could do is abide by the AFP's request. Give them what they wish for. I probably won't even notice their stories disappearing from Google News, but I'm sure they'd notice their disappearing readership.
From the article: (Score:3, Interesting)
So...if they didn't like it, they could have opted out...
Funny how google threatened to sue rss scrapers (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3
the company requested the removal of RSS-powered Google News headlines from his Ecademy business networking site and made it clear Webmasters are not allowed to display headlines from Google News on third-party sites.
oh the irony
Re:Like the saying goes: WHAT IS YOUR MALFUNCTION? (Score:2, Interesting)
AFP can sell their content to whoever they want (say, ACME news), but if google's bots go and grab this content from that web site (in this case ACME), then why the hell is AFP bringing up a lawsuit against google?
Their problem might be with google for displaying it, but that's where the CEASE AND DESIST letter comes in, their first problem is with ACME news for allowing google to cache it in the first place.
I understand the whole point of google not having the licence to do what they did, but just because this scenario might be what happened, does that then mean AVP has the right to automatically sue google directly?
Suppose I told something in confidence to a friend who then told someone else, say a reporter, and it got on the news? Would I be more upset at the reporter who then told the whole world or the friend who betrayed my trust?
This might not be the same thing, but it's pretty close. You start at the source of the problem, then spread out from there.
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:3, Interesting)
So, right away Google seems cleared.
If some prime minister makes a speech, it's fair use to quote text from the speech in order to report the news. The "news reporting" exception isn't designed to allow quoting of AFP's article about the speech. Put another way, the fact that AFP wrote an article isn't news being reported and doesn't trigger this exception. Go write your own article.
Contrary to your claim, Google News isn't commercial.
Yet. It's not making money yet. Isn't it interesting that they don't sell ads on that page or provide google cache links?
Your point about celebrities is hard to follow, but it's worth noting that they can't use a copyrighted work to attract attention to their causes any more than anyone else can. They need a license to sing "Happy Birthday" like everyone else. [insert long, off topic rant here]
To claim news is uneducational in general is to ignore what news is.
You don't seriously think that the "educational use" exception covers every quotation from which some one might learn something, do you? If you're not a school or a teacher, you'll have a hard, hard time claiming that you're making an "educational use" of a copyrighted work. That exception exists so that schools can function without hiring more lawyers than teachers.
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
AFP is in the news website business. So is Google. If AFP wants to use it's content to gain eyeballs and Google is taking the eyeballs away, AFP has been damaged. Whether Google has taken enough of the work to infringe, that's yet to be decided.
Re:AFP's prime business isn't their web site (Score:3, Interesting)
Due to copyright, Google has to ask permission to copy from AFP, not from the websites which already paid AFP. And right now, Google isn't copying a small fair use chunk, they are copying 99% of AFP's material.
Re:Most web-litigious country? (Score:1, Interesting)
There is some fundamentally flawed logic there, and it can be easily exposed with a counter-example: the U.S. airline industry surives (for many reasons) only because of direct federal subsidies; I wouldn't exactly say that Delta or Southwest Airlines is "part" of the U.S. State... would you?
That a business is recieving money from the state simply does not mean it is the same thing as a government department. Implying that the French government's sponsorship of AFP is tantamount to the French government itself suing google is ridiculous.
Re:AFP will be the ones to lose (Score:3, Interesting)