Google Loses Cache-Copyright Lawsuit in Belgium

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.).'"

Comments

Ridiculous

[brunes69]

If you can't cache content, then you can't search it.

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.

Re:Ridiculous

[aussie_a]

There's a difference between keeping a local copy and distributing it.

Re:Ridiculous

[jandrese]

So the answer is obvious: Just delist these guys from Google entirely and configure the webcrawler to ignore them. Problem solved and you won't have to worry about them coming back later and claiming that your locally stored copy is also a copyright violation too.

What's the problem?

[DrEldarion]

If they don't like it, they can very easily "opt out" by using Robots.txt to disallow Googlebot. I fail to see where the problem is here.

Re:What's the problem?

[CRCulver]

That argument makes no sense before the law. If publishing companies don't like me photocopying their books and passing them on to people, laden with ads for profit, could I say "No, the companies should have printed them on special anti-photocopying paper"? No. Google broke the law. The law assigns no responsibility to copyright holders to protect their property from those who would copy it, but it does bind the citizenry not to copy.

FWIW, I hate the entire idea of copyright, I'm just trying to show how Google has to act in court.

Re:What's the problem?

[DrEldarion]

Here's the rub, though:

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.

Re:What's the problem?

[suv4x4]

If they don't like it, they can very easily "opt out" by using Robots.txt to disallow Googlebot. I fail to see where the problem is here.

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.

Re:What's the problem?

[91degrees]

It's basically about established practice. We've pretty much established right and wrong when copying a book. As a rule, you don't do it. In many countries, libraries and schools have a licencing agreement that allows photocopying. With TV shows it's considered perfectly acceptable to copy an entire show. Audio mix tapes are usually considered acceptable or explictely legal.

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.

Re:What's the problem?

[inviolet]

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.

Why are newspapers retarded?

[Mr. Underbridge]

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*.

Extend robots.txt?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Can't google propose an extension of the robots.txt file format to allow the original publishers to set a time limit on when the search engines should expire the cache?

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the rightsholders doesn't want people/robots to access their "jewels" then maybe they shouldn't fucking publish them on a public net in the first place?

Really?

[gillbates]

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.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

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.

In an interesting turn of events, private individuals are allowed to copy and archive web pages, but Google is not.

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.

Just Pull Out

[Nom du Keyboard]

Google ought to just pull-out from indexing anyone who complains about their methods. You effectively disappear off of the Internet w/o Google, and these whiny complainers deserve exactly that. Maybe after they've lived in a black hole for a while they'll realize the benefit of having their free material easy for web users to find and view.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[jandrese]

Which is not only completely impractical (very few sites would set the "cacheme" flag because almost nobody would know about it), but counter to the way the internet works. By default you have to assume that anything you post on the internet will be tracked by search engines, blogged about, cached, etc... That happens to _everything_ on the internet, it's the nature of the beast. That's also why the internet works so well. If you want to make your page behave differently than all of the other pages on the internet, then you need to look into setting some very easy to use flags (robots.txt and the meta tags listed above) to change the behavior. You can't assume that just because it's yours that it will be treated specially. If you're really worried about it then don't post on the internet, plain and simple.

Re:Public Domain

[kramer]

The way I see it, once you release media free of charge to the general public its content becomes public domain.

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.

robots.txt

[Skadet]

Isn't this what robots.txt is for?

Re:Not in terms of copyright law

[drawfour]

Plus they actually authorized Google (and anyone else) to get the local copy.

Google: Hey, what that page? Can I see? (HTTP GET)
Them : Sure, here you go! (200 OK HTTP response)

Give them a choice.

[Kadin2048]

Well if they want to be assholes about it, why not just drop them off of the database completely?

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% (depending on who's doing the counting) of users are concerned.

THE INTERNET DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!

[mrchaotica]

Why should we have to opt out from being cached, why can't we opt in instead?

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?