One Down for Google
Techtree is reporting this morning that Google has settled the lawsuit filed against it by the French news service AFP. AFP had claimed copyright infringement against Google News for posting content without prior permission. The settlement of the lawsuit means that there will be no legal guidance on the question, but the settlement - and the lawsuit itself, highlights an important point in the use of any copyrighted material.
With only a few exceptions, the first step for any person or company that wants to use copyrighted material should always be to ask permission from the copyright holder. Depending on the use requested, and the author involved, the permission may involve different things. Money is not the main goal in all cases - some authors will be primarily interested in credit and exposure, others will want website links above all else, others still may be most concerned with the context and location of the use. By talking to the author and determining what they want, a user of copyright material in most cases can get exactly what they want without angering the author. And if the author wants something that’s not acceptable to the user, then the user can look for other material to use.
The various Google lawsuits are disturbing because they seem to be demonstrating a pattern of entitlement mentality by Google. In other words, it may be be that because their business model appears to be based on having the most comprehensive search capability and databases possible, they seem to have jumped to the conclusion that they are then entitled to access everything out there, copyright laws be damned.
The public good may be served by improving access to information of all sorts, but the public good is also served by allowing authors to maintain control over their own property. Google is not entitled to decide for the rest of us which public policy should control.
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