TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance

Re: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance

Barry Margolin (barmar@alum.mit.edu)
Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:17:15 -0400

In article <telecom25.276.2@telecom-digest.org>, Glenn Chapman
<afp@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

> "Links are really the stuff that has made the worldwide web a
> success," von Lohmann said. "It would be very chilling if any time you
> sent a link you could be held responsible for copyright infringement."

But they're not arguing that the links are infringement, it's the
thumbnail images included with the links that are infringing. IANAL,
but it seems pretty clear to me that these thumbnails are "derivative
works". So the only question is whether they should fall under the
"fair use" exceptions in copyright law.

There's also the issue that Google isn't actually copying these from
Perfect 10. According to the story, the copying was done by web site
subscribers, who copied the pictures to their own web sites. Google
then discovered them when searching those other web sites. Perfect 10
presumably has a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index their
pictures (and I'm sure Google obeys this protocol) as well as
requiring registration to see most of its content (and Google wouldn't
have an account). But once some copies the pictures to other sites
(which is more blatant copyright infringement, but the perpetrators
are probably judgement-proof), how is Google supposed to know that
they shouldn't be indexed and thumbnailed?

Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

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