A Nevada Court ruled last week that Google doesn’t violate copyright law when it caches web page content for its Google Cache feature. The U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada found in the case of Blake A. Field v. Google Inc. that Google’s copying and storage of the content consitutes fair use under the copyright statutes.
The court was ruling in favor of Google’s motion for summary judgment in the case brought by Field, who had posted a story he wrote on his website and subsequently sued Google for copying it in the cache feature. The court said that despite his awareness of “meta-tags” that stop Google from copying and caching content, Field nonetheless posted his content on the Internet and thus gave Google an implied license to copy the content.
But more importantly, the court went through a traditional copyright analysis to determine if Google’s caching of content constitutes fair use. The predominant factor swaying the court was how “transformative” Google’s caching is. The court said the cached links “add something new” to the content and do not supersede Field’s work.
Here’s how the court said Google transforms content:
—These links give users some sense of what the content is when the original page is inaccessible.
—Cached links allow users to detect changes to web pages over time.
—Cached links allow users to understand why the pages are responsive to their queries.
—Cached links are designed in a way to differentiate the cached content from the original pages.
—Site owners control whether their actual web pages are cached through meta-tags.
Although not a party to the case, the EFF has praised the decision, calling it a landmark case that could influence other pending cases, such as those filed by book publishers against Google’s book scanning operation.
“This ruling makes it clear that the Google Cache is legal and clears away copyright questions that have troubled the entire search engine industry,” said Fred von Lohmann, EFF senior staff attorney. “The ruling should also help Google in defending against the lawsuit brought by book publishers over its Google Library Project, as well as assisting organizations like the Internet Archive that rely on caching.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:03 PM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
