Did European Court Just Make Search Engines Illegal? 11-Word Snippet Can Be Copyright Infringement
from the bad-bad-bad-bad dept
With the AP being out there claiming that fair use only covers snippets fewer than five words, there are some questions about where the boundaries for "fair use" of "snippets" lies. Unfortunately, a new ruling in Europe seems to be pretty extreme (in a bad way). The ruling found that a snippet as short as eleven words could be copyright infringement. The case involved a clipping service, that would scan in articles (from print publications) and then would give clients very short snippets that highlighted the keywords they were monitoring. In many ways, this sounds like the physical equivalent of any online search engine. The clipping company claimed that it was legal because it was "transient," but the court said that since the service printed the output on paper, it was "permanent." Yikes.While the online world is a little different, it's not too difficult to see how someone could make a case that a search engine is doing the identical thing to what the clipping company was doing here, and the question of whether or not the result is "transient" or "permanent" is entirely dependent on the end-user -- which was part of why the court found paper to be permanent:
"Since the data capture process is apparently not likely itself to destroy that medium, the deletion of that reproduction is entirely dependent on the will of the user of that process. It is not at all certain that he will want to dispose of the reproduction, which means that there is a risk that the reproduction will remain in existence for a longer period, according to the user's needs,"Certainly, you could say the same thing about a search engine result (the end-user could certainly store them -- or [gasp!] print them), and then you've got the same problem. No matter how you look at it, this is a bad ruling. It makes little sense from the perspective of publishers, clipping services, users or the entire online world.
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Filed Under: clipping service, copyright, europe, search engines, snippets, transient use
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Brilliant!
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Ah well...
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Wow!
Would I have been better off tearing out the page and bringing it with me?
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Re: Wow!
Of course! Because then you wouldn't be copying!
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Re: Re: Wow!
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Re: Wow!
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Re: Re: Wow!
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This post is copyright (c) property of Tristin (TM)
I am open to the possibility of providing you a license to use my intellectual property, however. Should you desire to obtain a license, I accept PayPal, Google Payments, and cash. Serious offers only, please. Nothing less than $5,000 will be considered. If you have received a notice of infringement, a settlement payment of $15,000 may prevent further legal action.
Thank you for using my comment services. Have a nice day.
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Re: This post is copyright (c) property of Tristin (TM)
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Re:
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Shredder?
Beyond the whole permanent paper argument, all data is as transient as the user wants it to be. Keeping cache history forever, or taking a digital photograph of everything you are ever interested in, doesn't sound so crazy when drives can be had for about a dime per GB. I don't see how that argument has anything to do with copyright infringement.
In this case, why shouldn't a small clipping put in the context of several other clippings from different sources, with some small aspect relating them (like keywords), constitute fair uses like commentary or transformation? Doesn't changing the context like this alter the relative meaning, even if the clips are gathered by automata? Even for just one clip alone, doesn't reducing the work to a single snippet based on keywords fundamentally change the meaning to revolve around those keywords rather than the original author intent? For example, a thorough report about high fructose corn syrup could easily turn into a snippet of corporate history if the article is constrained to just those sentences containing the keyphrase "Coca Cola". It's scary how little selective editing is required to transform a work's meaning. Politicians use this form of transformative editing all the time when quoting each other. Idiot theologians do the same thing all the time when quoting their particular Bible.
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Appeal?
And since this is Europe's highest court, I suppose there's no chance of appeal, right?
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Re: Re:
It wouldn't be in the US, but I'm not so sure about Europe. I know some countries certainly do have a notion of gov't copyrights.
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In Related News...
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did anyone read the line ....
The key part of the above statement is "for Sale" they are taking small snippets and selling a service to resending them I see the judges problem.
Also the judge skirted the issue by stating "clippings service's copying could be unlawful." note the word "Could"
If this was a free service I dont think there would be a problem.
On a gut feel level this is yet another small nail in the coffin on the way to outrage and senatorial hearings on fair use and reworking copyright.... which of course will have media industry execs and lobbyists drooling ....
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Company X sues google for copyright infringement over search result snippets. Google then removes company x from it's search system.
Company x suffers the wrath of the internet savvy community coupled with the not-particularly-internet-savvy community not being able to find them using google, and dies, or comes begging back to google.
Search engines hold the majority of the power here. While companies can (and do) advertise their websites directly, either on other websites, radio, TV or billboards, people forget specific URLs quite quickly and even if they've *just* seen an advert on the tv, will then go to google and search the company name rather than bothering to remember the URL. Once some companies/organisations (probably the AP to be honest) start pushing this issue, they're going to be disappeared from search engines by their own request, and then they'll suffer for it.
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SE
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Re:
Allow me to fix that for you:
Company X's lobbyists pu$h through a new law that makes search engines pay a flat license fee to a collection agency per site listed. The collect agency then "finds" the each site's owner and sends them a check. There is no way to opt out of this system. This collection agency is run by board members for major news organizations, who, oddly enough, make the lion's share of money from this fee.
There, that's better.
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Google books
It is a strange irony though that various jurisdictions' differing strengths of copyright law in have resulted in Google deciding in the settlement that even though international authors' works are included in the 1000s Google is copying per day, it will not be making those available to international audiences.
Thats the fascinating and challenging thing about copyright - pull one thread of the web here and a fly gets caught over there.
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Re: Re:
That's not a sarcastic rebuttal of your point btw, it's an actual question. I was always under the assumption that search engines can include / exclude whatever sites they want for whatever reasons they want, since they're a private company, and the main impetus for not doing so was that their reputation would suffer if they did.
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Really...
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Re: This post is copyright (c) property of Tristin (TM)
Come get me.
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Re: Re: This post is copyright (c) property of Tristin (TM)
Come get me."
I'd write you a legal nastygram, but I couldn't do the funny little things justice. I just don't have that level of evil and delusion inside of me. Why don't you just send me $100, I'll gloat about what a victory this was for creative types all across the universe, and we'll call it a day.
On a similar note, if any other commentors need legal and licensing representation, Tristin (TM) is accepting applications. All licensing fees go directly to the commentors, of course, after a 50% fee. Allow 6-8 years for delivery of funds. All comments not licensed elsewhere will be assumed to be represented by Tristin (TM).
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Re: Appeal?
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Re: Wow!
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Its becoming incredibly frustrating watching companies and individuals trying to get something for nothing. They are all after the quick buck now at the likely expense of more bucks later. This short termism seems to be endemic in business and government everywhere.
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Did anybody actually read the article?
What it did say is that when you distribute copies printed on paper, you no longer qualify for the transient works exemption in the copyright law. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since ink on paper is widely regarded as a permanent medium for data storage.
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Re: This post is copyright (c) property of Tristin (TM)
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Re: Did anybody actually read the article?
Yes. Did you?
The court didn't rule that copying 11 words was infringement. It said it might be, but didn't look into the question.
From the linked article:
Though the Court conceded that "words as such do not…constitute elements covered by the protection", it said that copyright law would apply to extracts even if they contained just 11 words.
Well, that certainly sounds to me like they looked into whether or not 11 words could infringe and found that they could, although single words do not.
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Re: Re: Did anybody actually read the article?
This is a preliminary ruling on only two points of law, First, does this fall under the transient exemptions, and is it possible that a snippet of eleven words can be protected by copyright. The first answer is no. The printing process makes the copy no longer transient. The second ruling is maybe. At this point the court cannot say that such a short excerpt is not protected, but cannot say that it is protected either. There is still a lot more to be done before the court can rule on whether this, or any, eleven word snippet can be declared infringing.
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Re: Re: Re: Did anybody actually read the article?
Which agrees with "...they looked into whether or not 11 words could infringe and found that they could, although single words do not."
The important point is that they said that 11 words *could* be infringement, which is what the claim was, not your straw man argument that it necessarily was.
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