IndustryGoogle Talks On Its Approach To Content & Copyright

Google Talks On Its Approach To Content & Copyright


Our approach to content
at the Official Google Blog has Google explaining to
the world how it works with content owners and its desire to respect their
rights.

In terms of copyright, Google stresses that it generally sticks to what’s
known as fair use, though the post doesn’t use those words. The idea is that it
shows very short summaries of stories, pages, thumbnails of images but doesn’t
reprint this material, requiring people to clickthrough to the actual material
from places like Google News.

Of course, in the case of cached pages, many
including
myself
would argue that Google goes beyond fair use. Cached pages are an
example where content can be viewed without clicking through to the original
site, and the opt-out approach for that doesn’t feel appropriate at all.

Google also notes there are cases when it wants to go beyond fair use, to
make broader use of content where permission would be required. The
deal with the
Associated Press is cited as one of several examples here.

To me, this is also a way for Google to help defuse the idea that some
publications have, such as the
Belgian
newspapers recently
, that Google can be bought off to avoid lawsuits. To me,
this is Google stressing that it will do content deals in some cases, but that
these content deals aren’t necessarily being done to avoid lawsuits, especially
when it feels it is acting within fair use guidelines. That’s my speculation and
take on this, of course. Google didn’t comment when I asked if this was the
reason for raising the AP deals.

Moving past Google saying it respects copyright, it then stresses that it
allows people to opt-out, even if it feels it has fair use rights. In general, I
agree with this method, which Google along with the other major search engines
generally follow. Trying to get permission from each web site to index it would
be an impossible task, and one that’s not necessarily even legally required.
Opt-out through things like robots.txt is an effective way to protect rights
holders plus benefit the public as a whole. I do hope they’ll change cached
pages to opt-in, however.

Google talked with me about the post shortly before it went live yesterday,
to see if I had any questions. The main thing in my mind was if this was in
response to the Belgian lawsuit. No, I was told. The post has been in the works
for some time, apparently. Google’s hoping it will help people better understand
their approach to content.

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