EFF backs Google
p2pnet.net News:- The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has come out on Google’s side in a legal wrangle involving ‘adult’ site Perfect 10.
"Perfect 10 wants to hold Google responsible for the misdeeds of the websites it links to," says the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann.
But, “No search engine could survive if that were the rule, nor, for that matter, could most bloggers or other web publishers. If Perfect 10 succeeds in convincing the court that in-line linking and framing of images constitutes a public display or distribution of copyrighted work, then millions of web publishers and bloggers will suddenly be on the wrong side of copyright law – as well as the millions of web users who may follow a link to a website with infringing content."
The case is on appeal from a lower court ruling ordering Google to remove links to certain sites containing Perfect 10 photographs, pending the outcome of the case, says the EFF, which has filed an amicus brief on its own behalf and that of the Library Copyright Alliance.
Because the appeal, “promises to clarify the copyright rules that apply to search engines and other web publishers who link to content on the Internet, it has attracted the attention of the recording industry, motion picture studios, professional photographers, and the technology sector, each of which has also filed briefs in the case,” says the EFF.
Also See:
EFF – Digital Copyright Battle Puts Linking at Risk, July 21, 2006
Perfect 10 – Google vs Perfect 10 nudie site, February 22, 2006
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July 21st, 2006 at 8:07 pm
while still reading at the top of this article.
It sounds, to me, like the EFF is starting to cave in?????????
PLEASE tell me I misunderstood the meaning of this?
July 22nd, 2006 at 1:56 am
I believe your first impression is a false one. It reads that EFF is in favor of Google, not against.
To be against Google would be to be in favor of restricting copyright
images however they might find their way into a search engine (web crawler or what ever). Certainly the **AA would love this but then they don’t need it. They already hold copyrights on the art work for movie and music covers.
Still one has to question where does it stop? If a news source uses the image as part of an article are they subject to this infringement also? With copyright being practically rewritten as the months go by it is hard now to understand just where the legal is for use. Parody stands a chance of being ruled as infringement with the direction laws are going now.
While I can understand photographers wanting copyright on images, I would question where this stops. War journalism might in turn become “property of the military” in order to control those images and the prevention of them being shown is not out of conception.