German Court Says Google Image Search Doesn't Infringe On Copyrights
from the well,-phew dept
Over in Germany, a court has ruled that Google does not infringe on the copyright for images when it displays thumbnails of those images in its image search. This is, obviously, quite a good ruling. If it had gone the other way, it would have effectively killed Google's image search. While there are some similarities to the court rulings against Perfect 10 (who has sued various search engines for displaying thumbnails) in the US, there is one major difference. With Perfect 10, the complaints were mainly about search engines indexing images copied/scanned by others. In this German case, the artist was upset that Google showed images that she, herself, put on the website. It seems that this particular point made a strong impression on the judge, who noted that "The plaintiff made the content of her site available without using technical tools to block search engines from finding and displaying her works," and because of that, Google "was allowed to interpret the plaintiff's behavior as agreeing to use her works in image searches." Always nice to see a reasonable ruling.![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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Filed Under: germany, image search, thumbnails
Companies: google
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You are so obviously one of these keep everyone safe types ... just a guess are you from the US and christian?
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Search engines are helpful to customers, draconian assholes are not.
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They opt in by being on the web....
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A web site, on the other hand, is kinda like holding a yard sale on the front lawn. It's assumed that you kinda want people to see it and it's content.
If she doesn't, why in heaven's name, did she put up the site in the first place?!
Of course, it's a search engine's job to collect and index data do that people can find her web site, right?
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Why is robots.txt not enough?
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Although this would effectively be the end of search altogether, which would destroy the internet market as a whole. So maybe this is a good ruling...
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Regards
Adah Taylor
http://www.askpcexperts.com
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People Need To Learn How To Host A Website Properly
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But how is this any different than how it is for most business'?
Open a store, everyone is allowed in.
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As for filing a request with your business, I was unaware that spending 15 seconds setting up a Robots.txt file is difficult.
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Cable company Ziggo in court over Pirate Bay
Ziggo has told Brein it has no intention of stopping The Pirate Bay and that the foundation has no legal basis to make such a request.
'We are simply a channel,' said a spokesman in the NRC. 'We give people access to the internet and support an open internet.'
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/05/cable_company_ziggo_in_court_o.php
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