Slashdot Mirror
French News Agency Sues Google News
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."
Exactly they are shooting themselves in the foot. This is just like Apple suing their fan base, and other companies suing sites for deep linking - all of this merely reduces their fan base and reduces their advertisement dollars - they are the losers.
I'll play the devil's advocate: If you had a product, wouldn't you want to be able to control where it is advertised? Pretend you don't like Google, and think that it presents your product in a bad light (those tiny little images and all, right next to competitors' images.) Shouldn't you have a right to tell them to remove the ad?
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
What Damages? Google doesnt make a cent off Google news. All Google does is provide a blurb and a link, if the user is interested they click the link and go to the originating website. How is that possibly bad?
see it
one of two, Yahoo! took it legal or France hates google
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
Perhaps I am stupid or ignorant, but I still do not get why corporations figure it is bad for them to be promoted by Google and their services. It is not like Google shows the entire article, them linking sites and showing headlines has only one effect: People learn about the sites they show and click the links, meaning the news agency gets more visits and therefore more money. Isn't cutting off your major biggest referrer kind of shooting yourself in the foot?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Have there been any cases where someone has been able to keep one site from linking to another? I seem to remember someone suing on that basis but I don't remember hearing the verdict.
That is very funny, that all they have to do is drop Googlebot requests. Instead they go to court!
CNN and your local newspaper most likely subscribe to the wire services and have a deal that permits redistribution.
If Google does not, then by providing excerpts for a non-editorial, non-educational, and rather commercial purpose they may be unfairly infringing.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Have they tried applying a robots.txt file properly first? Wouldn't it be cheaper?
You can't handle the truth.
Significantly, any major story released by the AFP is essentially an OP/ED peice based on a previously released story by either the Associated Press and Reuters. Why haven't either AP or Reuters attempted to fight google for displaying thier images? And why would the AFP mind getting more attention by getting some free advertising? The photos are labeled AFP!
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's AFP news site:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=1504
sucks !
A bunch of stupid ass holes.
and yes, I'm french
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
And the number of ads (and hence the amount of income generated for that traffic) on the google news page is exactly what?
(hint: it's about the same as the probability of Windows XP getting GPL'ed by the end of the year)
None of that matters a shit.
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.
No Comment.
So...if they didn't like it, they could have opted out...
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
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.
How do you know that was before the lawsuit started? Nowhere in TFA does it say when the lawsuit was filed, and that date is barely 3 weeks ago.
US Code Title 17, 107: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
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.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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.
"AFP could not survive without that cash from the French government, so equating them with the French State is the only reasonable conclusion that can be made."
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.
Actually, it's called "Google is ignoring the robots.txt file that is in place". Please do some research before you post.