Google Wins a Court Battle 272
Gosalia wrote to let us know about an article which opens with: "In a legal win for Google, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site in search results." Thankfully, we can all still read Usenet articles on Google as well as other archive services.
Gtalk (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gtalk (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gtalk (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gtalk (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gtalk (Score:5, Insightful)
1) US paranoia-legislations and assramming-acts do not apply here, thank FSM, and
2) Norwegian laws regarding information extraction by police/etc from service providers are reasonably strict, i.e. they need to have a case. Also,
3) Should I ever want to discuss something illegal I would either use GPG through email or encrypted IM anyway.
Re:Gtalk (Score:5, Insightful)
Which in turn makes it easier to prove it was you who sent the message, for example if your partner later decides to betray you.
Re:Gtalk (Score:5, Interesting)
You wouldn't use a private key, for Pete's sake - you'd use symmetric encryption. You, your accomplice, and an unverifiably large set of strangers would all know the shared passphrase, and each of you could plausibly deny that the other encrypted it.
If you're going to conspire, you'll have to be more clever than that.
Re:Gtalk (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer to discuss all my illegal activities using the RL protocol.
Re:Gtalk (Score:3, Insightful)
What it you want to discuss something entirely legal, but private? Like talking to your lawyer about a case brought against you? Or discussing your child's medical condition with your spouse?
Are you really okay with Google keeping a record of such conversations?
I'm not, which is why I wouldn't use Google's services for anything which needs to stay confidential.
Legally binding? (Score:3, Informative)
All that seems to do is prevent them from going to gmail. It doesn't seem like there's anything to prevent anyone from saving any content to anywhere that is not gmail.
As someone else pointed out, use PGP or don't complain when your content is spied upon.
Cash Grab Suit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:5, Insightful)
50,000 John Does?
Racketeering?
Civil conspiracy?
The guy sounds like a nut job.
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope if nothing else this case helps focus more on the content, and less on the delivery method. A parallel being torrents that bring you linux Distributions vs torrents that bring you copyrighted media.
Just shows, we really *dont* shoot the messenger these days
However you're right, its frivilous and sets no real precedent. But makes way for some perhaps
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:3, Informative)
Newsflash - Linux distributions usually contain large quantities of copyrighted media. And that doesn't make them illegal.
Please refrain from saying "copyrighted" when you mean "unlicensed", as this helps spread the dangerous myth that content under free licenses is somehow different from other copyrighted content.
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:5, Insightful)
The courts so far have ruled that these caches are legal and the search engine people are not doing wrong. This suit along with another one builds precendce over these types of concerns. So its been a long time coming.
Now people concerned with privacy can get educated about how to block robots/spider, how public the web/usenet is, and how to work around this.
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:5, Insightful)
You publish or you don't.
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:2, Interesting)
--
onedotzero
thedigitalfeed.co.uk [thedigitalfeed.co.uk]
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:5, Informative)
--
On 17 March 2006, onedotzero (926558) wrote:
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:3, Informative)
Not so fast... (Score:4, Interesting)
And there's your sticking point. If the original poster has explicitly indicated that they do not wish their post to be archived, it seems pretty clear that copying their material in a way that will be archived is an infringement of their copyright.
Usenet archives essentially rely on an "implied permission" defence to any charges of copyright infringement: they argue that if the person posted the comment, then are giving implicit permission to copy the post for the purposes of circulating it on Usenet, and archiving is just joining in with that network. Regardless of anyone's personal opinion, there is clearly some logic behind this position, and it's a fair case to make.
However, if the poster has explicitly indicated that they do not wish to have their post archived permanently, then there is clearly no implicit permission to do so, and keeping it beyond a normal period (which I'm guessing most Usenet users would describe in terms of weeks) would be an infringement.
Similarly, it's the accepted convention that someone replying to a Usenet post should quote properly. At least, it used to be; today, the law might view quoting improperly a la Microsoft and Google Groups to be the accepted convention. :-( In any case, one could again make a reasonable argument that implicit permission has been given by the poster to copy relevant excerpts of the original post for the purpose of preserving context in subsequent discussion.
Again, however, if the poster has explicitly denied their permission to archive their material permanently, then you can't really argue that they're giving implicit permission to copy their material in a way that will be preserved essentially forever. Quoting such a post without marking your own post as not-for-archiving itself might be dubious, and I'd have to conclude that archiving the material via that indirect route was a clear violation of the original poster's copyright.
The bottom line is that all of these archiving systems are on shaky legal ground as long as they're opt-out, because being on the Internet does not somehow preempt the accepted conventions of copyright law. (Neither do the opinions of a few people on Slashdot whose personal view is that copyright is wrong and the law doesn't apply to them, incidentally.) One could at least argue a reasonable defence of things like Google Groups and the Wayback Machine on the basis of implied consent, but if that consent has been explicitly withheld (via X-No-Archive, robots.txt or whatever) then really, it's hard to see how any service archiving such material via any means has a legal leg to stand on.
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:2, Interesting)
IANAL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Public forum posting (Score:3, Informative)
Now, if you use the no cache header
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-No-Archive [wikipedia.org]
and claim copyright, you MAY have an argument...
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:2)
Re:Cash Grab Suit? (Score:2)
Good for Google! (Score:5, Informative)
But without getting too off track, I'm glad they won this battle. Because of their line of work and the innovative new steps they take, they're bound to step on a few toes. I just hope we don't smother them in too many lawsuits, both as indivduals and as a government.
Re:Good for Google! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why Google is good (for now) (Score:3, Interesting)
These interests are almost opposite to the interests of most other big companies. Whereas most companies want to restrict anyone from using their copyrighted works without paying them, Google *NEED* to use copyrighted works without paying for them.
They won the battle ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They won the battle ... (Score:2)
Strange Decision (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Strange Decision (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out "that were submitted to a store-and-forward global distribution system with the intent of disseminating them as widely as possible, knowing full well that they would be archived, folded, spindled, and mutilated".
In other news, every public mailing list in the known universe does the exact same thing. Gonna sue Yahoo! Groups because they're publishing the email that you deliberately sent to 1,500 strangers?
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
There are several things missing here. First, for most of the history of Usenet, it was not archived (or at least, not well known to be archived). Users of Usenet, up until around 1995, expected news postings to be ephemeral.
Second, the fact that a technology allows for something to hap
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
It's not in the public domain, but I think he's implicitly given a licence for anyone to distribute the posting in it's original form (and quote it in a reply) because that's the way the medium works. What _should_ constitute an infringement of his copyright is republishing it as your own work (which Google isn't doing - Google explicitly cites the original autho
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
Unless Joe Schmoe explicitly gave Google permission to copy his work, copyright is clear - Joe retains copyright and can prevent Google from distributing his work.
Now, you and I can certainly agree that Usenet, by defi
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
What Google has done is to take an ephemeral work and make it available: 1) permanently,
Since google has access
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
Unless Joe provided his work to Google on that CD, along with an explicit transfer of copyright to Google, Google does not have copyright for that work. Joe and Google never arranged to transfer copyright, and Joe never lost copyright by publishing his work.
The fact that some third pa
Re:Strange Decision (Score:3, Insightful)
However Joe gave limited reproduction rights to all usenet servers, and google may be considered one within the limits of being one (ie: no books based on his stuff)
The fact that some third party burned Joe's work to CD and then gave it to Google does no
Re:Strange Decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure they are. Google just happens to run an NNTP server with a pretty interface and a long expiration time. There're tens of thousands of messages stored on my own server, reader for public distribution, at this very moment.
What if I posted a licence with my content stating that only nntp servers and individuals could redistribute what I have posted?
As long as we're throwing out goofy ideas: what if I scream into a restaurant that no one is allowed to tell anyone else what I'm about to say?
When you contract with a carrier of a wide-open public medium to deliver your message to the world, you have no right to expect that another carrier of that medium won't deliver to someone you didn't expect, or in a form you didn't anticipate.
Re:Strange Decision (Score:4, Interesting)
Storage and redistribution are not the same thing, no matter how much you'd like it to be. For instance, I have a very large archive of MP3s from CD's I've bought. I cannot legally redistribute them without the copyright holder's consent.
But when storage is one of the primary design requirements, they're close enough to the same thing for gov'mnt work. This isn't like SMTP, where servers are expected to delete messages after they've passed on. Rather, NNTP servers are required to store their traffic for a while - that's how the system works.
So, Google just happens to have an undefined expiration time on their NNTP server, and have provided a web interface to it. What else are they doing that every other NNTP server in the world is not?
Sorry, you're wrong. As a copyright holder, I do have the right to dictate how my content is distributed.
Not always. I'd be interested in hearing you explain to the judge how you released your message with the explicit goal of unlimited worldwide distribution, but don't want it distributed. It's not like you can accidentally post to Usenet; you had to jump through hoops to put your words out there. What would a reasonable person expect to happen to them once they've entered the global network of computers designed to spread them around?
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2, Interesting)
To answer your question, there is no law or document that I know of that says that usenet posts are automatically part of the public domain, which is what would be required for "unlimited" distribution. Feel free to point me to an authoritative source if you know of any.
In the meantime, I'll give you the example that motivated my comments. Parts of the Linux kernel are stored in the Google Groups archive. Does this mean that the GPL for Linux has been invalidated? Of course not. It means
Re:Strange Decision (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that's a good analogy, though. If Linus himself posted that code or those binaries, then he gave his explicit permission to distribute them. If the messages were posted by someone else, and their posting violated the terms of the GPL, then Linus could petition Google to pull them - just as the RIAA could petition Google to remove their artists' songs (if put there by someone other than the copyright holder).
I think a b
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
If they published it as a book, THEN they'd have a problem however they're not.
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
Of course it's not, unlimited means "without limits." What google does have a fuck load of limits on it, specifically those inherent in any newsgroup server. As I said, they're not making a copy in another medium and so on.
Let me state this clearly: Every fuckin newsgroup server and Slashdot and most forums and half the fuckin internet shows your work to anyone who wishes t
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
If you post total shit with seemingly no fuckin knowledge of how usenet works and is supposed to work then I will simply be forced to keep insulting you.
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
Which I may say isn't what you said in the last post, you said they're not YOUR newsgroup server. Neither is every other damn newsgroup server in the world to which your message gets sent.
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
Re:Strange Decision (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a question although I don't see why not; other usenet servers have web based access as well I believe. If Groups still propagates messages that get posted to it then it only has a different interface. Again it is a reasonable extension of how usenet works, and does'nt fundament
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
The RIAA would have you believe that you're breaking the law there, too.
Also, later down the chain of argument aboive, you mention changing medium being prohibited. Hence, you're infringing yourself by your own arguments.
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
Re:Strange Decision (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got a much simpler idea: If you don't want something to get freely archived and redistributed by countless 3rd parties outside your control, why don't you just try not posting it on Usenet?
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2, Informative)
Sure. Now, if you read the fine print of you agreement with your ISP or news server provider, you'll find that you almost certainly agreed to let them redistribute any of your usenet postings without restriction. Those are the terms you chose.
I suggest next time you just follow my suggestion and simply don't post your dubious opinions on usenet if you don't want them automatically reproduce
Re:Strange Decision (Score:3, Insightful)
If he didn't want his posts archived, all he had to do was have the following line at the top of his post...
x-noarchive: yes
As for some of his site being quoted in Google's search results? That sounds like a classic case of fair use to me.
And further into the article...
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
x-noarchive: yes
Sorry, but that's wrong. The number of providers who honour X-noarchive renders that time-worn suggestion the equivalent of adding a legal privacy disclaimer to the end of an email sent to a public mailing list.
Re:Strange Decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
No one may cache or make copies of this site, including into the ram or hard drive due to a web browser. Any such behavior is copyright infringement and liable to prosecution.
you will get laughed out of court if you try to sue people who viewed your website.
Law isn't black and white, and is based on past cases and probably
Re:Strange Decision (Score:2)
For a "Brilliant math guy" you sure are an idiot.
Interesting Products... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Interesting Products... (Score:3, Funny)
1) Sue Google.
2) ???
3) Get laid!
Re:Interesting Products... (Score:2, Funny)
The uncommon form, but `the one most guys, idiots, anticipate' (69) is:
This is the uncommon form because rarely do you ever win the lawsuit. If you should happe
What was he thinking ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have always wondered what those guys suing for anything _really_ think ? For example, does this guy honestly thought Google was violating his copyright ? Or did he sue just to give a try and maybe obtain easy money via financial compensation ?
Re:What was he thinking ? (Score:3, Funny)
He's in the porn business. He sued for publicity.
Re:What was he thinking ? (Score:2)
By the way, if this gets republished anywhere, I'll sue.
Content isn't that special...get over it (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line...your damn content isn't that special anymore! Stop suing people! Get over it...we probably already forgot about the content we "stole" or archived long before you remembered to call your lawyer. We moved on to the next thing before you could look up "cache" for FREE on dictionary.com.
Re:Content isn't that special...get over it (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that the easy availability of 'content' has also cheapened it*. Sure, there are 6 billion or so people, and maybe they can all (one day) make content. The truth is, 99.99% of it will be complete crap.
Is it possible for people to sift through 10000 pieces of crap to find one useful/good item? No. People will do what they've always done - go with the crowd. One could argue that this is the 'service' that a centralised distribution system (curre
Re:Content isn't that special...get over it (Score:2)
I'm not sure how to do it with BitTorrent, but with the stories I have written and shared via p2p (and I do this on Gnutella), I just add a few keywords to the end of the file name, prefaced wi
Re:Content isn't that special...get over it (Score:3, Insightful)
wtf (Score:2, Insightful)
Thankfully? (Score:4, Interesting)
Web-based reading of USENET is fine; the problem is with archiving: USENET was originally not intended to be archived, and the fact that it is being archived has greatly changed it. Anybody who, these days, makes a controversial contribution to a USENET forum under his real name is a bloody fool. There is no point debating this anymore: unrestricted archiving of USENET news has become de-facto accepted. But that doesn't make it right or a good thing.
Your Choice (X-noarchive) (Score:3, Interesting)
You always had a choice in the matter via the "X-noarchive" flag. It would have made an interesting case if he had set "X-noarchive: yes" in his posting and Google (and DejaNews before them) had ignored it.
Re:Your Choice (X-noarchive) (Score:4, Insightful)
Parker doesn't have that excuse though.
Re:Your Choice (X-noarchive) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thankfully? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thankfully? (Score:2)
When DejaNews created a complete, non-expiring, searchable archive of USENET, that changed the way USENET was being used fundamentally, and I don't think for the better.
Because anything that gets posted to USENET (or posted on a web site) gets archived and remains around forever, people simply cannot have open, non-anonymous discussions
Re:Thankfully? (Score:2)
Really? And this was stated in which RFC or other authoritative document?
Archiving was certainly never required, but conversely it was never forbidden, as far as I know.
Re:Thankfully? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm confused--are you trying to make a legal argument? A technical argument? Or what? Because I'm not.
I'm saying: USENET was used by its users with the expectation that it was an ephemeral medium. Regardless of what laws or RFCs allowed or didn't allow, that's the ground rules most people assumed and most people acted in accordance with. Now that it has become clear that it is being archived, that has changed
Re:Thankfully? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not in my case, at least. I've been on USENET since 1988 and I never had that expectation. In fact, I have complained a few times to the relevant administrators that they were expiring stuff too quickly, as I wanted to go back in history looking for references.
What's more, that fact that Google can dig up some of my posts dating from at least 1992 also means that it was non-ephemeral. There was no Google back then, remember?
Re:Thankfully? (Score:2)
Why is it bad that content made available with the knowledge - if not intention - that said content be widely and freely distributed, continue to be widely and freely distributed ?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to work with the assumption that anything on the publi
Re:Thankfully? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not making a legal argument. RFCs aren't legally binding. But they would give you the expectation that implementors would follow them. So if you weren't relying on documented rules, what was the basis for your expectation?
That's the ground rules most people assumed,
Maybe you did. How do you know "most people" did? I didn't. I used a
Re:Thankfully? (Score:3, Insightful)
Undoubtedly, there are those who never considered the possibility of USENET being archived. But really - those people just weren't thinking things out. Keep in mind that Google's archive is complete as it is because of archive donations from various individuals who, on their own accord and at their own expense, began archiving USENET well before "Google" or "
disturbing asymmetry (Score:3, Interesting)
When an individual posts something to USENET, then apparently it's OK for companies like Google to archive and republish that stuff, even making money from it if they put advertising on the same page.
But how is that different from broadcasting? It seems to me that if what Google is doing is OK, then I should be able to record, archive, and republish any music or other programming broadcast over the Internet or airwaves.
Re:disturbing asymmetry (Score:4, Informative)
So in short, Google archives all Usenet posting where the author doesn't say that he doesn't want it archived. Therefore the analogy would be that you can record, archive and republish any music and other programming unless the author says he doesn't want this. And indeed, this is almost the current copyright situation. The difference is that the default for radio broadcasts is the reverse: Unless the author explicitly allows you to rebroadcast, you may not.
I guess if the default would be changed, then the only difference would be that radio stations would start to explicitly say all the time that you may not rebroadcast their material. Which I don't consider an improvement over the current situation.
Re:disturbing asymmetry (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:disturbing asymmetry (Score:2)
1. Laws are different in different countries. So even if in the Netherlands it is forbidden to show an external page in a frame, it may still allowed in other countries, so then Google would just have to avoid putting a server doing that in the Netherlands and put it in one of those other countries instead.
2. Google doesn't show any advertisement on the cach
Google is in the right. (Score:5, Informative)
* E-mail header that prevent google groups from archiving your message: "X-No-Archive: Yes".
* Meta tags: <META NAME="Googlebot" CONTENT="nofollow">
* Hyperlinks <a href="http://google.com" rel="nofollow">
* robots.txt file with proper syntax
* Google's link removal page: http://www.google.com/webmasters/remove.html
Re:Google is in the right. (Score:2)
Just because t
Re:Google is in the right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Google is in the right. (Score:2)
Re:Google is in the right. (Score:2)
This is such a patently ridiculous analogy I'm amazed you even managed to come up with it...
The difference is, when you post something on the web (or usenet), you are doing so with the *knowledge and intention* that your "content" will be freely available a
Troll (Score:5, Interesting)
Gordon Roy Parker is the resident troll on various Usenet groups. He has been around for years, and alternates between posting nonsense disguised as an informed opinion and accusing other posters of plagiarizing his writing. I think he may also sell an e-book about seduction.
Here are some references [google.com]
"Ray Gordon" discussing his loss (Score:2)
Suegle (Score:5, Funny)
Features include:
-the ability to blog about the lawsuit and how much of google's money we are trying to get.
-RSS feeds of the latest filings & verdicts
-Lawyers oncall via GTalk
feel free to add any I'm missing
Ignorance (Score:2, Offtopic)
Open wireless access and filesharing you are a ISP (Score:3, Interesting)
So open up your wireless access point!
Use it for denyability when filesharing!
This is great for filesharing programs that pass packets "automatically and temporarily" as part of their protocol (always in proxy mode) such as MUTE http://www.planetpeer.de/wiki/index.php [planetpeer.de] (info link).
It's too bad it's only U.S. District Court and not from an appeal.
"When an ISP automatically and temporarily stores data without human intervention so that the system can operate and transmit data to its users, the necessary element of volition (willful intent to infringe) is missing," the court said.
I know Ray Gordon personally and this lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Parker is a nutcase, a man who has serious (admitted) mental problems and doesn't seem to care how he alienates anyone who reads what he has to say, and apparently thrives on causing dissention. He is basically one of the funniest floor shows if you like watching crazy people act in an insane fashion. His detractors that post comments against him are almost as crazy as he is, and add to the hilarity of the situation there.
Here's the situation on this lawsuit. Mr. Parker has written some books on how to seduce women, but his own stellar lack of success in doing so over the past few years plus the ineffectiveness of his ideas means he has essentially had to give away his books for free since no one will pay to read what he has to say. This compares with a number of men who make money through paid seminars in telling other men how to do exactly this. These men have been fairly successful in their conquests and tell other men how to learn to be able to do the same thing. Since Mr. Parker is unable to do this and can't teach anyone how since he doesn't have the slightest hint of a clue, all he can do is whine about it and threaten to sue anyone who disagrees with him.
Well, Google - as it does for millions of other sites - cached the information on his website (where his books were available for downloading) in order to allow others to be able to search and find it. He didn't know that he can mark his site so Google won't do that, and then when he tried to change the status of one of his books from giving it away to charging for it, then discovered people could obtain the book for free from Google by using the cached copy, Gordo decided to sue Google. As with the other six lawsuits he's filed in Federal court (I'm not kidding), he lost again. Again I'm not kidding, Gordon has filed at least six cases in federal court and lost every one of them. A federal judge referred to his ability to handle a lawsuit as "... Plaintiff Gordon Roy Parker's... continued and inexcusable failure..." {Gordon Roy Parker v. "Wintermute" et. al.} 02-CV-7215 (Feb. 25, 2003, Federal District Court, Eastern District, Pennsylvania). The only other item on the world-wide-web referred to as a "continued and inexcusable failure" is the U.N. screwup in Kosovo that got people killed.
It's said that you're not really a member of the newsgroup alt.seduction.fast until Ray threatens to sue you. He's threatened me with a lawsuit over my comments at least four times in something over two years I've been reading postings there. When I first got there I defended him because I thought he was being unfairly targeted by just about everyone else, but over time, from his own words, I learned just how much of a miserable misanthrope he is. He hates himself for what has happened to him, hates everyone else because most of the time he makes wild claims without proof, says things that don't make much sense or are completely wrong.
He's also known for being a bully and the only thing he respects are people who won't back down from his threats. All he's ever done is threaten me with a lawsuit because he knows I'd clean his clock in a New York minute with a countersuit if he did actually sue me.
One of the things he posted - on September 11, 2001 - was that everyone who died in the two towers deserved what they got, primarily because he wasn't hired by some companies that work there. He's referred to some of the people (women in general) who died there as "office whores," mainly because he couldn't get hired (probably because he's just as unpleasant in person as he is on USENET.) While he's entitled to his opinion, to make such a spiteful comment
Re:DejaNews (Score:2)
BTW, DejaNews already started to get worse before Google acquired them. That was around the time when they changed their name from DejaNews to just Deja.