French News Agency Sues Google News

n1ywb writes "CNN and others are reporting that 'News agency Agence France Presse has sued Google Inc., alleging the Web search leader includes AFP's photos, news headlines and stories on its news site without permission. The French news service is seeking damages of at least $17.5 million and an order barring Google News from displaying AFP photographs, news headlines or story leads, according to the suit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.' This means they're suing in America this time, not France, which means Google might actually care if they lose."

AFP will be the ones to lose

Even if they're successful, AFP will be the losers here. Why can't people see that far from stealing their customers, Google drives visitors to their sites? By removing themselves from Google, all AFP will do is reduce their number of visitors, and hence the overall value of their site. This is particularly strange as AFP sells subscription based premium content, which isn't available to the masses anyway. Thus the only parts of the site that Google will be able to index are the loss leaders that they use to try and entice people to subscribe. As a business, I'd have thought you'd want that content to be made available to a wider audience at no extra cost to you...

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

I'll play the devil's advocate: If you had a product, wouldn't you want to be able to control where it is advertised? Pretend you don't like Google, and think that it presents your product in a bad light (those tiny little images and all, right next to competitors' images.) Shouldn't you have a right to tell them to remove the ad?

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

Fair use allows Google to do Google News in the first place. Sure, some people may *want* that control. That doesn't mean they automatically get it. Also, Google News does not have ads, check for yourself: yourself [google.com]

It's that kind of thinking that got SCO in its current position. I honestly don't think AFP has a chance on this one. That's my personal opinion. :^)

Disclaimer: I am not a blah blah blah...

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

I'm not at all positive that fair use applies.

It's not personal use; it's being redistributed to the whole world.

It's not editorial use, because Google isn't writing -about- the articles.

It's not educational use, because there's no broader educational context in which Google can claim to be using this for teaching or research purposes.

And it's commercial, because they're using this to get viewers to access their other services which DO have advertising, as eyeballs are their business model.

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

It'd help if you'd actually use the guidelines specified for valuing if a work is covered under fair use.

Quotes from US Code Title 17, 107:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include

So, right away Google seems cleared. But, lets make it more clear since something like blatant plagiarism of a whole news paper would likely not be protected.

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

Contrary to your claim, Google News isn't commercial. Your logic that a non-profit action attracts attention/money isn't relevant. By your logic no celebrity would have access to fair use since their non-profit statements would attract attention to them and conceivably make more money. The test is for if the work itself is commercial. Google News doesn't make money.

Second, Google News is for providing access to news. To claim news is uneducational in general is to ignore what news is. Now, if Google News started quoting from press releases by companies or one of the Government produced "news" releases, you'd have a much stronger argument. Such is propaganda and propaganda is not educational except in the general case that knowing what to look for it in propaganda.

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

The original was news as well.

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

Only the first paragraph is copied, normally, as well as a blurb picture. That's a relatively small part of most reports.

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

This is the real crux that I think exhaunerates Google. Just like Slashdot or fark, Google News redirects to pages in a way that if anything *increases* the market for the work. It's unlikely I'd ever even see a fraction of the news papers listed on Google News if it weren't for Google. Google News doesn't replace all these news sites. It's a nexus for finding them.

The funniest part is that Google already does the same thing with their search page. They include a small blurb and a link to the original site. While the Google Cache is likely dice, from the perspective of ad revenue being the market provider, search engines in general haven't really been questioned before. Google News is merely a search engine specifically geared towards news. If Google News is commit some illegal act by linking to news stories and including a blurb then so are most store catalogs, search engines, and tons of databases of information (lots of things one makes are copyrighted, after all).

So, I sincerely fear for what such would mean.

But it ignores the obvious

When you attach your web server to the internet, you're letting everyone look at it.

Part of that process is that people will look at it, classify it and judge it.

It inherent in attaching a web server. If you don't like it, the best thing to do is unplug the ethernet cable from your web server, and tell people to dial directly (or through Minitel) to your server, because you feel that putting it on the internet places you in a difficult position.

I don't see how you can have it both ways...they want wide exposure, so they place it in the most public place on the planet, then they complain that it isn't viewed in precisely the way they envisioned.

I really don't understand the beef.

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

robots.txt?

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

I found their robots.txt file:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /beta
Disallow: /francais/news
Disallow: /english/news

Now... was this present before or after the lawsuit started, and is google news the same as normal indexing?

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

None of that matters a shit.

Google links to publicly accessible content hosted on publicly accessible websites, period.

AFP posts content to their publicly accessible website, and lo and behold it's linked to.

If AFP doesn't like the way they're doing business, then they should change it. I think they'd be hard pressed to be a successful news service though if they refused access to all of their news.

As has already been aluded to, this is so SCO it's not even funny. There is no case.

Now, even given that, maybe the best thing Google could do is abide by the AFP's request. Give them what they wish for. I probably won't even notice their stories disappearing from Google News, but I'm sure they'd notice their disappearing readership.

Re:AFP will be the ones to lose

No, wait, you don't understand what AFP is: it is a news provider, like Reuters, they don't really care if people go to their website or not, it is completely marginal in their business. Their job is to sell news (pictures / text) to other media (newspapers, radios, websites etc), which can then use it directly (reprint it) or use it as a basis for more complete, analytical articles.

So AFP does not really care how much coverage their content gets for free, in fact it is threatening as it "devaluates" the content: now anybody (and more importantly, any media) can have access to most of AFP's content minutes after it is broadcast, without paying for the (probably huge) monthly bill newspapers pay to AFP. (medias pay to get the right to access to AFP's network, through specific software and servers).

The fact is that Google is indexing and displaying that content without paying for it. But Google can (rightfully) argue that they are only indexing other websites (ie the newspapers who have paid for AFP content and displaying it as is on their own websites), and that therefore they're not violating any copyright law. But in the eyes of AFP, Google is using their content in an original form, displaying it on their own website, with their own layout.

So both companies have mostly valid arguments.

Re:AFP's prime business isn't their web site

How is Google able to access the paid portions of AFP's site without paying?

Simple answer - they cant, and arent. Google only has access to the information that AFP is providing to the public *FOR FREE*. If AFP does not want to provide that information free, they can arrange that by making the proper adjustments to their site.

Heck, if they even want to be snippy, and not provide it *just* to Google, it would take 10 minutes with a robots.txt, or a user-agent check, to block Google from accessing their site. It sounds to me they are more interested in suing than in preventing Google from using them. Or perhaps they dont want to block Google from accessing them, but they want to force Google to pay for doing so.

Re:AFP's prime business isn't their web site

"They're a press agency, selling content to newspapers, and -- tada -- web sites. Of course they're not happy about google taking what they sell, for free."

Hmmm. So, they want to block Google news from displaying its headlines. those headlines are displayed on the electronic editions of thousands of newspapers and news sites, worldwide. This leads us to 3 options:
1) It's too difficult to ensure AFP headlines are filtered out. Google News is shut down or signigantly neutered.
2) AFP headlines are filtered out. AFP loses market share and relevance
3) (really, a result of 2) News sites avoid AFP like the plague - they don't much like the idea of AFP driving page views *away* from their sites.

AFP's douchitude affects much more than AFP. It affects their customers (the newspapers). It would do them well to remember that.

Security! Security!

AFP sells subscriptions to its content and does not provide it free. Google News gathers photos and news stories from around the Web and posts them on its news site, which is free to users.

If Agence France Presse didn't want people to view their content for free... ...why didn't they properly lock it down?

It's not like Google's impersonating a paid user account to get the information!

Re:Security! Security!

from AFP website:

Copyright:
©AFP 2005 . All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of contents from this website for personal and non-commercial use only, provided they do not remove any copyright, trademarks or other proprietary notices. Except as provided above, users may not reproduce, publish, sell, distribute or in any way commercially exploit contents from this website without the prior written consent of AFP. AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.

I think that locks it down properly. Google just violated their copyright by reproducing and publishing their content without consent.

Re:Security! Security!

Linux is free but it has restrictions as to redistribution rights, etc. Microsoft cannot take the free linux kernel and incorporate that into their product while ignoring the GPL restrictions that were put on the free download.

Just because you put it up on a website without a password, doesn't mean that there are not restrictions on it's use.

Re:Security! Security!

I disagree. If google puts a tag on its page which loads an image from AFP's publicly accessible server they have neither reproduced nor distributed the content. They have simply provided a reference to AFP's image, which the consumer's browser loads and displays in the middle of google's page. Google has done nothing but point to a location where the image can be found. It is the consumer who has actually downloaded the image from AFP. If AFP doesn't like this, they need to adjust their server not to provide images to people who aren't viewing an AFP page, or take other technical measures to prevent google from indexing news on their site.

Re:Security! Security!

Because they can't; AFP doesn't own (all) the servers Google is taking AFP content from.

AFP provides content to newspapers; the newspapers that buy the content are happy to allow Google to scrape content from their entire sites because that drives pageviews. The result is that AFP content licensed by newspapers winds up on Google News, even though AFP did not allow Google direct access to AFP content.

Google's public now. Lawyers smell blood.

Now that Google's a publicly traded company flush with cash, many potential litigants are smelling blood.

Google is both suing and being sued by so many parties now it's hard to keep track, as a search on Google will show. [google.com]

One of the cases involving images.google.com [itvibe.com] appears to me to be more of a publicity stunt by the plaintiff.

I think we can expect more such lawsuits.

Damages?

What Damages? Google doesnt make a cent off Google news. All Google does is provide a blurb and a link, if the user is interested they click the link and go to the originating website. How is that possibly bad?

Re:Damages?

Actually, Google news is still in "beta" and it has been for a long time, so they don't actually sell ads. People speculate that one of the reasons that Google news has been in beta for so long is they don't know how they would work the copyright issue if they were a commercial service.....

Why would you attack Google?

Perhaps I am stupid or ignorant, but I still do not get why corporations figure it is bad for them to be promoted by Google and their services. It is not like Google shows the entire article, them linking sites and showing headlines has only one effect: People learn about the sites they show and click the links, meaning the news agency gets more visits and therefore more money. Isn't cutting off your major biggest referrer kind of shooting yourself in the foot?

NOTE: News agency != News site

Please note the difference between a "news agency" and a "news site"!

It's not trivial to filter out press reports from a news agency.

News agencies sell their raw-stories to news sites. Google can easily remove a news site from their news index, but excluding some articles from a news agency appearing on various news sites is difficult...

Case will already be over.

There was a similar case shortly after the birth of the www. Site "A" sued Site "B" for quoting part of thier website and linking to it if readers wanted to read more. Imagine the horror, one site linking to another.

Anyway, the court decided it was not Copyright infringement because the original source was provided and given full credit, and some other factors.

Nothing to see here

Reality check

caveat I'm develop search engines and also worked in a photo agency for some years like AFP.

Bottom line: AFP is right but Google's lack of ads or even full stories on the page should save them.

I just looked at Google News and noticed there is a photo that goes to a story, but there is no photo on the page it links to. The photo must have come from some other news source and the caption "Boston Globe" got pasted below it as a link.

This is maybe good for layout but is contrary to what a photographer would be used to seeing. It probably got them pissed off.

I doubt Google is knowingly copying from AFP. I think they grab any photos they can find. But they will probably find a lot of quality AFP photos. The problem is you don't know who they got it from. And the lack of attribution. That is how AFP makes their money: Copyright control. And guess what? Google uses the work of AFP photographers to make a more visually interesting page for a service that is both free and worth enough money to make an IPO.

Well, this was bound to happen. AFP can probably prove it was an AFP photo, but cannot prove Google copied it from them (and Google likely didn't). It would be useful to include metadata in the photos as to proper credit, url, and policy.

Probably AFP contacted Google, got rebuffed, and then AFP realized that if they don't fight it they will lose control over their online future. Which is true.

But this is really a search engine - you can't actually read the articles there but need to surf elsewhere - and there are no ads, so it can be said that this is a free service.

Anyway it walks a fine line between a search engine and a publication, and the best thing would be if Google could actually sign a contract with Reuters and AFP say, and show large, high quality photos on their site. They could also pay photographers and writers directly which is of course the next step, when Google really goes for the throat. For now it is just a search engine, and Google should be free to make a dynamic layout any way they want, except that it should show accreditation (if in the photo file itself) at least as a mouseover popup label.

I'm not going to guess the outcome, but hope AFP loses badly, otherwise it will be chilling. They ought to be able to demand that Google not index a photo that has an AFP byline embedded in it, but that too is an interpretation we'll have to wait and see about.

Re:Don't go there!

Looking at http://www.afp.com/robots.txt which looks like:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /beta
Disallow: /francais/news
Disallow: /english/news

I find it very strange that they do not disallow the entire site if they mind Googles robot finding and showing their news... I would understand them being upset if Google ignored or disrespected their robots file, but it does look very much like they are suing them for doing something they allow?