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.
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.
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
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
Usenet was around a LONG time (1980 was the announcement of "A" news) before X-noarchive came along (1996? I can't find an earlier reference but I thought it was earlier). By now it's really unclear what a Usenet poster in, say, 1983 "intended". You certainly didn't "always" have that choice.
Parker doesn't have that excuse though.
"You always had a choice in the matter via the 'X-noarchive' flag" ...unless someone quotes your post in a reply.
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.
You can inhibit Google from archiving your Usenet posting by adding "X-No-Archive: yes" to the message header, or as first line in the message body. It will still be shown for a short while on Google, but when you are posting on Usenet, it's actually part of the system that your message is copied to any number of servers, stored there for a limited time, and made accessible to anyone, so while IANAL, I'd guess by posting to Usenet you give implicit permission to do that.
So in short, Google archives all Usenet posting where the author doesn't say that he doesn't want it archived. Therefore the analogy would be that you can record, archive and republish any music and other programming unless the author says he doesn't want this. And indeed, this is almost the current copyright situation. The difference is that the default for radio broadcasts is the reverse: Unless the author explicitly allows you to rebroadcast, you may not.
I guess if the default would be changed, then the only difference would be that radio stations would start to explicitly say all the time that you may not rebroadcast their material. Which I don't consider an improvement over the current situation.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.