Nude photo site wins injunction against Google

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Injunction against Google might fall by legal precedence: This article suggests that Google might lose this particular lawsuit; but on page two, it says: ?A federal judge in Nevada ruled last month (click here for PDF)
( http://www.eff.org/IP/blake_v_google/google_nevada_order.pdf ) that Google's cache feature is "fair use" of even copyright works.?

Since the Congressional enactment of DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, (a gross miscarriage of the duties of our elected representatives who should be protecting their constituency with equal representation and justice for all) everyone who has ever held a copyright is trying to fill his or her pockets at the expense of any and all unsuspecting victims. Luckily, two or three justices in the higher courts are still utilizing reasonable, rational, legal, and common law principles when considering the ?fair use? aspect of the law.

The link shown above makes interesting reading, if you can sift through all the legalese. But the bottom line is that Court rulings as to the nature of ?fair use? have managed to reinforce the rights of non-holders of any given copyright. For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of ?fair use?, a simplified example is where a book reviewer quotes passages from the book with the intention of helping the reader to become familiar with the content. A photocopy of the book?s jacket is deemed to be fair use; passages from within the body of the work are deemed to be fair use. The guiding principle is that the person ?encroaching? on the author?s work is doing so with no intent of claiming authorship and with no intent to reap a profit (his only gain is what he earns as a book reviewer).

In the case of Google?s search engine, it uses what are generally called robots that crawl the web creating a database numbering into the billions of items, which it retrieves upon a web user?s query for something specific. It frequently scoops up graphics found on the web site?s first page. Without the doctrine of fair use, there would be no search engines available under any circumstances.

In the court case cited above, the judge ruled in Google?s favor, because the plaintiff failed to take well-known steps to avoid having his web pages listed in a search engine.

But in response to someone?s posting, as much abuse as the Bill of Rights suffers at the hands of those sworn to preserve and protect our Constitution, the First Amendment is still intact ? but not for much longer! My personal chief gripe with the DMCA is that it transfers from legitimate law enforcement agencies the job (and THE AUTHORITY) of ordering a web host to respond to an order to remove something from its pages on nothing more than the assertion of a private party.

Sony records, the Recording Association of America, or the Motion Pictures Association of America have no standing as law enforcement agencies and should not be allowed to issue dictates based on unsupported assertions. They should be required to adhere to due process of law: they should present, in writing, their assertions of copyright infringement to an officer of the Court or to local law enforcement agencies. Such action, as most of us know, would not take additional time nor allow the ?villain of the piece? to escape! Thus, if the presumed victim of copyright infringement proves to have acted in bad faith, having submitted a perjuriously sworn statement, he can be held accountable, and will think twice before acting precipitously to infringe on others? rights.; Posted by: bobinvegas@... Posted on: 04/04/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use