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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.).'"
The ruling basically reiterates the current Google policy.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Don't they have anything better to do....like make us Americans some waffles.
That's $472,675 per year, or, in Google's accounting terms, $0 after rounding to the nearest million.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
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.
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.
"Well now, the result of last week's competition when we asked you to find a derogatory term for the Belgians. Well, the response was enormous and we took quite a long time sorting out the winners. There were some very clever entries. Mrs Hatred of Leicester said 'Let's not call them anything, let's just ignore them.' and a Mr St John of Huntingdon said he couldn't think of anything more derogatory than Belgians. But in the end we settled on three choices: number three, the Sprouts, sent in by Mrs Vicious of Hastings, very nice; number two, the Phlegms, from Mrs Childmolester of Worthing; but the winner was undoubtedly from Mrs No-Supper-For-You from Norwood in Lancashire, Miserable Fat Belgian Bastards!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
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.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
Plus they actually authorized Google (and anyone else) to get the local copy.
: Sure, here you go! (200 OK HTTP response)
Google: Hey, what that page? Can I see? (HTTP GET)
Them
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?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Here's how to fix the problem. When such a page would be linked to in the cach, instead put up the following:
This page is cached, but your government officials will not let you read it. Here are their names and addresses, and the date of the next election, and the challengers to them who have signed a document that they will reverse this ruling if elected:
Censor: Hercule Poirot
Free Speech Challenger: Agatha Christie
Next election for them: 18 Aug 2007
Censor: Phinneas d'Satay
Free Speech Challenger: Mannequin Pisse
Next election for them: 18 Aug 2007
etc.
Tailor it per local region if that can be determined from the IP.
9) Wait a few years
10) Profit!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.