Slashdot Mirror
Google Wins a Court Battle
Gosalia wrote to let us know about an article which opens with: "In a legal win for Google, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site in search results." Thankfully, we can all still read Usenet articles on Google as well as other archive services.
Can't wait until people try to sue Google for saving their Gtalk conversations....
There is no knowledge that is not power.
He sued over Google indexing and achieving a USNET post of his, so this means he isn't that technologically ignorant. To me, his suit smells like a cash grab. But it's also good he lost because it sets a useful precedent.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I may not agree with every decision Google makes, but all in all, I believe they're the closest thing we've got to a big business with a conscience. I mean they've got great potential to do some good, as this article points out. http://tcal.net/archives/2006/02/23/google-charity -plans/
But without getting too off track, I'm glad they won this battle. Because of their line of work and the innovative new steps they take, they're bound to step on a few toes. I just hope we don't smother them in too many lawsuits, both as indivduals and as a government.
but the war is still to come. It's interesting to contrast this with their recent loss against Perfect 10. Compared to the lawsuits from the publishers and the US government, this one seems like an easy victory.
After all, I am strangely colored.
According to the ZDNet write-up, he does business as the Snodgrass Publishing Group, who have some interesting offerings at a site they own called "cybersheet.com". This is the top result from a Google search for "Snodgrass Publishing Group"
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I have always wondered what those guys suing for anything _really_ think ? For example, does this guy honestly thought Google was violating his copyright ? Or did he sue just to give a try and maybe obtain easy money via financial compensation ?
The bottom line...your damn content isn't that special anymore! Stop suing people! Get over it...we probably already forgot about the content we "stole" or archived long before you remembered to call your lawyer. We moved on to the next thing before you could look up "cache" for FREE on dictionary.com.
I think, therefore I doh.
the way i figure it, if you put it on the net and people wanna look at it, they will find a way, if you cant deal with it dont put you s**t on the interweb
~FFTL4LIFE~
All Google had to do was buy a million monkeys, give each a computer, and let them type on them for about five minutes in order to reproduce all of the Usenet archives without "stealing his work".
Thankfully, we can all still read Usenet articles on Google as well as other archive services.
Web-based reading of USENET is fine; the problem is with archiving: USENET was originally not intended to be archived, and the fact that it is being archived has greatly changed it. Anybody who, these days, makes a controversial contribution to a USENET forum under his real name is a bloody fool. There is no point debating this anymore: unrestricted archiving of USENET news has become de-facto accepted. But that doesn't make it right or a good thing.
Well, I generally like Google, but this is a disturbing asymmetry to me.
When an individual posts something to USENET, then apparently it's OK for companies like Google to archive and republish that stuff, even making money from it if they put advertising on the same page.
But how is that different from broadcasting? It seems to me that if what Google is doing is OK, then I should be able to record, archive, and republish any music or other programming broadcast over the Internet or airwaves.
And they will sue you.
Slashdot = Google Marketting? Nevermind what the trial was about...
Right. So I set up a machinegun outside my house to fire automatically at anyone who passes by on the street and it works and kills a few people. I haven't committed murder becuase I set up an "automatic" gun so the requisite "intent" is missing?
Whoever this judge is, he needs to take a refresher course on the law.
There exists several legitimate ways to keep your web content out of google's indexes. They respect all of the following methods. Google even has a page titled "Google information for webmasters" which documents most of these. On what grounds does one have to sue?
* E-mail header that prevent google groups from archiving your message: "X-No-Archive: Yes".
* Meta tags: <META NAME="Googlebot" CONTENT="nofollow">
* Hyperlinks <a href="http://google.com" rel="nofollow">
* robots.txt file with proper syntax
* Google's link removal page: http://www.google.com/webmasters/remove.html
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
My jaw dropped when I started reading this article... I was surprised that this guy has made the news.
Gordon Roy Parker is the resident troll on various Usenet groups. He has been around for years, and alternates between posting nonsense disguised as an informed opinion and accusing other posters of plagiarizing his writing. I think he may also sell an e-book about seduction.
Here are some references
I miss DejaNews - i used to use it all the time, but then they were aquired by google (very early on) and competely destroyed into the monstrosity that is now google groups. Google can be evil and ruin things too. I was actually amazed that they became a good search engine after that fiasco.
Google should just start "Suegle" so we all can set up our own personal lawsuits against google.
Features include:
-the ability to blog about the lawsuit and how much of google's money we are trying to get.
-RSS feeds of the latest filings & verdicts
-Lawyers oncall via GTalk
feel free to add any I'm missing
You always had a choice in the matter via the "X-noarchive" flag. It would have made an interesting case if he had set "X-noarchive: yes" in his posting and Google (and DejaNews before them) had ignored it.
Hope this link works
.htaccess file would stop some of this. You can stop a spider (who followd rules) like the google bot, by placing the appropriate code to block certain information, in reality this guy should be mad at Usenet for not blocking such access from spiders or bots. This is defantly someone looking to make a buck that just spent thousands of dollars to get ready for a case that fell through.
The following words were posted to various groups on Usenet by Ray
Gordon (aka Gordon Roy Parker) in the hours following the terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon:
"There was no significant loss of life in those towers. Not
a one."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"This attack happened in my HOMETOWN, a hometown I do not
live in or work in because of illegal behavior. I hope those
who swiped my ability to live there enjoy the message they got
from GOD today.........."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"Now you know what it's like to see your horrors mocked the
way mine have been. That's not mental illness, that's a political
message, apparently delivered quite brilliantly."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"I am expressing my lack of sympathy for the loss
of a bunch of self-centered, asshole New Yorkers"
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"I'm not the one who blew them up, am I?
I just laugh at the poetic justice of it all."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"Pretty damn good day at the office if you ask me,
especially since I'm not the one who hijacked the planes."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"May those who died today rot in the hell they deserve."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"A bunch of asshole New Yorkers died...don't grieve.
No significant loss of life in those Towers...not a one!"
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"It is so PATHETIC how we are making angels out of some of the
worst corporate criminals in America just because they suffered
a little bombing."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"Do not mourn the trader trash."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"All I have said is that most of the victims who worked in that building
were not moral creatures. In fact, many of the very powerful types who
died in that blast used to say 'let God deal with them.' I did. God
has."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"It's not my fault that Bin Laden unwittingly took out a large segment
of American TRASH, and while I'd never do something like that, I have
to say those victims were anything but angels. They were greedy,
capitalistic employment discriminators with no regard for the
civil rights of anyone but themselves. Looks like GOD wanted me around
and not them. Who am I to question the lord?"
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
"Once again: no significant loss of life in those Towers."
- Gordon Roy Parker (aka Ray Gordon)
It seems there are more and more people who don't have or don't want anything else to do but sit home and think about who and how they could sue for some money. Then they buy some fastfood and sit down again to think on their next target.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
It seems that many people who use the Internet, even extensively, are ignorant of its necessities. Back in the mid-Nineties, there were very few competent search engines, so finding anything of use was difficult. You needed to know good "link lists" for any topic you were interested in, and good link lists were hard to come by. If the technologically illiterate manage to make the basic search functions of a search engine illegal, what do they expect to happen? I suspect that this plaintiff would be unhappy to find that all of his traffic suddenly vanished.
Of course they are legally covered but people will still try to sue as they didn't read them and then get upset after the fact
SolarVPS - Quality Windows and Linux Virtual Servers
So it's now confirmed that everyone has ISP status if they are just passing packets!
So open up your wireless access point!
Use it for denyability when filesharing!
This is great for filesharing programs that pass packets "automatically and temporarily" as part of their protocol (always in proxy mode) such as MUTE http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php (info link).
It's too bad it's only U.S. District Court and not from an appeal.
"When an ISP automatically and temporarily stores data without human intervention so that the system can operate and transmit data to its users, the necessary element of volition (willful intent to infringe) is missing," the court said.
Google does not ask your permission before indexing and caching your website, unless you explicitly forbid it with robots.txt or meta tags. It just goes ahead and does it. Gtalk, on the other hand, is something you choose to do with Google and you are subject to any terms it spells out. So it can't possibly be sued (successfully) for Gmail or Gtalk.
~CGameProgrammer( );
The thing about Google is, they have a lot of interests in the same places as normal people. For example, normal people have an interest in more powerful "fair use" clauses when it comes to copyright, and so does Google. (Google Book Search)
These interests are almost opposite to the interests of most other big companies. Whereas most companies want to restrict anyone from using their copyrighted works without paying them, Google *NEED* to use copyrighted works without paying for them.
AFAIK down here publishing something on the internet is considered "public performance" and the copyrights over a "bootleg" are somewhat confusing. There /is/ some caselaw considering recordings of shows (done not-for-profit) as non-infringing.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Why doesn't he just do what the rest of us do, and never ever admit to the old AOL username he trolled up Usenet for years under?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
What was this guy thinking?
... no, not Coke ... not Kellogs ... it's always the last place your search .. "
"Most of the 11 claims in the lawsuit, which also included racketeering, negligence, abuse of process and civil conspiracy, were dismissed for failure to state a claim."
Forgetting to put out the rubbish or feed the cat I can sympathise with: This is just ridiculous. Did he get anxious when shopping?
"I was going to sue some some big brand company
[ insert meme here ]
It is good that lawsuits like these crop up so that there are no grey areas whatsover in the future.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
means you give up control..
Now, if you use the no cache header
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive
and claim copyright, you MAY have an argument...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The court said that in its ruling (that Google "Maintains The USENET." It equated Google with an ISP network cache or a system cache rather than a republisher or rebroadcaster. I don't believe that this is correct. The more intriguing claim is the defamation claim, because in California, the Superior Court held in Barrett v. Rosenthal that "Section 230" immunity for libel does not extend to distributors (only to publishers). If that ruling holds up, it means my case would have won in CA. That case is presently before the CA Supreme Court. The SCOTUS is likely going to resolve all of these issues no matter what, and no one lawsuit will dominate the process. Mine only covers the Eastern District of PA and the Third Circuit, when I appeal, which I will. Prior to the appeal, I'll be moving for reconsideration of the dismissal, and noting what I considered a miscontruing of the facts and a misapplication of the law regarding Google's status as a system cache, an ISP, or claims that it "maintains the USENET."
>"When an ISP automatically and temporarily stores data without human
>intervention so that the system can operate and transmit data to its users,
>the necessary element of volition (willful intent to infringe) is missing,"
>the court said.
This is cool, now all those torrent sites PLUS all those that in addition also store and relay actual content are safe as long as they do it automatically. They have no intent as long as it is automatic!!! Great news!
And there's your sticking point. If the original poster has explicitly indicated that they do not wish their post to be archived, it seems pretty clear that copying their material in a way that will be archived is an infringement of their copyright.
Usenet archives essentially rely on an "implied permission" defence to any charges of copyright infringement: they argue that if the person posted the comment, then are giving implicit permission to copy the post for the purposes of circulating it on Usenet, and archiving is just joining in with that network. Regardless of anyone's personal opinion, there is clearly some logic behind this position, and it's a fair case to make.
However, if the poster has explicitly indicated that they do not wish to have their post archived permanently, then there is clearly no implicit permission to do so, and keeping it beyond a normal period (which I'm guessing most Usenet users would describe in terms of weeks) would be an infringement.
Similarly, it's the accepted convention that someone replying to a Usenet post should quote properly. At least, it used to be; today, the law might view quoting improperly a la Microsoft and Google Groups to be the accepted convention. :-( In any case, one could again make a reasonable argument that implicit permission has been given by the poster to copy relevant excerpts of the original post for the purpose of preserving context in subsequent discussion.
Again, however, if the poster has explicitly denied their permission to archive their material permanently, then you can't really argue that they're giving implicit permission to copy their material in a way that will be preserved essentially forever. Quoting such a post without marking your own post as not-for-archiving itself might be dubious, and I'd have to conclude that archiving the material via that indirect route was a clear violation of the original poster's copyright.
The bottom line is that all of these archiving systems are on shaky legal ground as long as they're opt-out, because being on the Internet does not somehow preempt the accepted conventions of copyright law. (Neither do the opinions of a few people on Slashdot whose personal view is that copyright is wrong and the law doesn't apply to them, incidentally.) One could at least argue a reasonable defence of things like Google Groups and the Wayback Machine on the basis of implied consent, but if that consent has been explicitly withheld (via X-No-Archive, robots.txt or whatever) then really, it's hard to see how any service archiving such material via any means has a legal leg to stand on.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I have to wonder about a company that bows to China pressure, but approves of a 18 month old being molested. That is the case that the US government wanted info about. Sickos! Check out the news from monday and tuesday.
"50,000 John Does? Racketeering? Civil conspiracy?"
Nah. Sounds just like the latest round of John Doe suits from the RIAA against file-sharers. Now if he had hired a $400/hour lawyer like the real racket calls for, then he might have gotten heard. Then we'd all be griping about the stupidity of the legal system for listening to something so bogus.
In reality, issues like this get tested all the time. The next guy or publishing company, with the proper high-priced attorney, will get his story coherent and very legal-sounding and test the boundaries of fair-use. There are people and companies sitting around trying to think up new creative ways to sue companies with large wallets. They look at cases like these and try to figure out where the guy went wrong or find some new angle. Why do you think we have warning labels on everything? yes, people are that stupid, but someone was bright enough to sue over it.
I saw on a frozen pizza laast night a warning: "You must cook pizza before eating." Really? I didn't know that, but the hard frozen crust and case of salmonilla later on might have given it away.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 12, 2001 - Google Inc. today announced that it has acquired Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service. This acquisition provides Google with Deja's entire Usenet archive (dating back to 1995), software, domain names including deja.com and dejanews.com, company trademarks, and other intellectual property. Financial terms of this transaction were not released.
If I filed a usenet posting in 1996 I never expected it to be searchable via google in 2006. The stupid real name policy of the usenet today fires back.
With Google we watch communication on usenet. Well. But if a writer does not want his postings to get published then google should respect his privacy rights and remove the content from archives.
Google transparency over usenet means totalitarian surveillance.
So, after suing McDonalds for not explicitely stating "hot" on a cup of hot coffee, people are suing Google for caching the content they posted on usenet.
;)
Some people here do not side with Google. Interesting. Let's say I publish a book on the internet and charge through credit card to let people read it, through access control. But Google caches this book of mine and enables people to read it without having had to pay me. Most probably Google also makes money by doing it cuz they put relevant ads on the search results for my book. I am a non-techie and come to know too late of such things possible on internet. I get angry. First, I take all precautions to ensure google does not index my book. Probably I even remove it from the net. But Google's cache lives! And my book is forever available on the net. I use Google everyday to find out about movies, books, coding, viruses, news, recipes or whether my next date has a criminal record. I sue Google cuz the same feature that enables the above-mentioned usage also infringes on my copyright.
My emotions - Understandable. Logic in this argument - Questionable.
oh! the human ignorance! Think abt it! The server my site is hosted on, also has a copy of my book. They also store multiple copies of all my data in case they need failover. What if someone working on the server is an avid reader and reads my book from that copy! Is it theft? What about copyright? I can get angry about it allright. But shud the ISP be taxed for my ignorance about how internet works? The guy in question seems to be not-so-dumb (hopefully) and the point is even further diluted: he is talking about newsgroups! When was the last time you thanked God, it's available indexed! All search engines enable is a quick and efficient search of internet's data. Google goes a step further in the search and caches old contents. If I do not know about this and post something which I do not intend to be available on the net, it is same as saying I did a transaction but I do not intend the bank to keep a log of this transaction [net=bank, post=transaction]. I am not the only owner of the transaction. Similarly internet as a system is also an owner of my postings, be it on forums, websites or anything else. The system allows me to configure it. How can I complain cuz a part of the system (in this case, Google) lets people search the rest of the system.
I'll not be surprised to see caught criminals suing google cuz it made it easy to identify them. Or if Mr. Parker lives, I'll not be surprised to see him suing Google tomorrow for defamation, cuz he can't get a date as Google has kept a log of all news pertaining to this case
--- Pooja.
Now, you and I can certainly agree that Usenet, by definition, is a way of publishing a work. Joe posted his magnum opus to alt.fan.furries or whatever, and that's his right. What Google has done is to take an ephemeral work and make it available: 1) permanently, 2) in a different medium (the web, not Usenet), and 3) in a way that makes money. Part (3) is not necessary to show a copyright violation, but I'm sure it helps.
(3) is true for every commercial news server like Easynews, Giganews and so on. Yet nobody would try to call their copy-and-forwarding copyright infringement.
Let me give another example. Joe creates a web page with his opus. You could certainly argue that Joe wants his work seen. You might even say that technology makes it easy and likely that Joe's page will be copied (by visitors and by web crawlers). Does Joe, by publishing to the web, lose his copyright? Does someone who copies his work suddenly have the right to redistribute it forever, and in a different medium, in a way that makes them money?
The analogy is flawed because Usenet by its definition works via copying other people's material, while the Web does not function that way.
Parker is a nutcase, a man who has serious (admitted) mental problems and doesn't seem to care how he alienates anyone who reads what he has to say, and apparently thrives on causing dissention. He is basically one of the funniest floor shows if you like watching crazy people act in an insane fashion. His detractors that post comments against him are almost as crazy as he is, and add to the hilarity of the situation there.
Here's the situation on this lawsuit. Mr. Parker has written some books on how to seduce women, but his own stellar lack of success in doing so over the past few years plus the ineffectiveness of his ideas means he has essentially had to give away his books for free since no one will pay to read what he has to say. This compares with a number of men who make money through paid seminars in telling other men how to do exactly this. These men have been fairly successful in their conquests and tell other men how to learn to be able to do the same thing. Since Mr. Parker is unable to do this and can't teach anyone how since he doesn't have the slightest hint of a clue, all he can do is whine about it and threaten to sue anyone who disagrees with him.
Well, Google - as it does for millions of other sites - cached the information on his website (where his books were available for downloading) in order to allow others to be able to search and find it. He didn't know that he can mark his site so Google won't do that, and then when he tried to change the status of one of his books from giving it away to charging for it, then discovered people could obtain the book for free from Google by using the cached copy, Gordo decided to sue Google. As with the other six lawsuits he's filed in Federal court (I'm not kidding), he lost again. Again I'm not kidding, Gordon has filed at least six cases in federal court and lost every one of them. A federal judge referred to his ability to handle a lawsuit as "... Plaintiff Gordon Roy Parker's... continued and inexcusable failure..." {Gordon Roy Parker v. "Wintermute" et. al.} 02-CV-7215 (Feb. 25, 2003, Federal District Court, Eastern District, Pennsylvania). The only other item on the world-wide-web referred to as a "continued and inexcusable failure" is the U.N. screwup in Kosovo that got people killed.
It's said that you're not really a member of the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast until Ray threatens to sue you. He's threatened me with a lawsuit over my comments at least four times in something over two years I've been reading postings there. When I first got there I defended him because I thought he was being unfairly targeted by just about everyone else, but over time, from his own words, I learned just how much of a miserable misanthrope he is. He hates himself for what has happened to him, hates everyone else because most of the time he makes wild claims without proof, says things that don't make much sense or are completely wrong.
He's also known for being a bully and the only thing he respects are people who won't back down from his threats. All he's ever done is threaten me with a lawsuit because he knows I'd clean his clock in a New York minute with a countersuit if he did actually sue me.
One of the things he posted - on September 11, 2001 - was that everyone who died in the two towers deserved what they got, primarily because he wasn't hired by some companies that work there. He's referred to some of the people (women in general) who died there as "office whores," mainly because he couldn't get hired (probably because he's just as unpleasant in person as he is on USENET.) While he's entitled to his opinion, to make such a spiteful comment
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I'm glad he lost. And I hope he stays lost (word is he's planning a appeal) forever. In fact, someone should cut his phone line now to protect him from himself. For Christ's sake he made the disputed posting himself! I'd call that publishing!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is it required by law that Gtalk clients support "off the record" and actually obey that? Because I use Gaim, and all my chats are logged regardless of such an option.
All that seems to do is prevent them from going to gmail. It doesn't seem like there's anything to prevent anyone from saving any content to anywhere that is not gmail.
As someone else pointed out, use PGP or don't complain when your content is spied upon.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Regardless of the copyright on the page, I think it's implicit that if you allow someone to index your site, you're also allowing them to archive it.
You're not allowing them to do anything but present it in its original form, the way Google Cache does. But if you don't want Google Cache to do its thing, it's very simple:
Ask them not to index your site. It's called ROBOTS.TXT.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't understand why people can't see the difference between posting an article that eventually expires and posting one that exists in perpetuity. No other Usenet provider on the face of the Earth keeps posts in perpetuity. Most of the people who are complaining about this, complain about it because they posted stupid shit in like 1988 or 1993 when nobody at all kept posts in perpetuity. In the entire history of the planet, only DejaNews did it then, and only Google does it now. One ISP out of tens of thousands of ISPs. It is not unreasonable for the people who posted back in the day to assume their posts would one day disappear, since that was the behaviour of every fucking newserver on the face of the Earth and infinite storage did not exist.
Moreover, the Google Groups archive is clearly transformative. In point of fact, Google did not simply set their newserver to never expire messages. Google didn't even receive the messages via Usenet. The messages were purchased from another company and transferred to Google via non-Usenet means -- maybe via sneakernet on tape, maybe over the network using a different protocol. Whatever it was, it was not the store-and-forward mechanism that is Usenet. It's not the mechanism people consented to, or expected, when they posted to Usenet. Further, the archive is presented in a non-Usenet medium (on the web) in the context of a commercial service (adwords).
In Barrett v. Rosenthal, the CA Superior Court said that ISPs and websites can be liable as distributors for third-party defamation. If that ruling holds up, Slashdot (located in CA) appears to be covered. I notice a lot of defamatory postings about me on this site. It might be wise for the admins here to take some responsibility. Ray Gordon
Look at the cheap pizzas in teh frozen food aisle at the grocery store. I buy them for my kids since they don't care about quality. They are good enough. My girlfriend noticed the warning when she was throwing one in the oven.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.