Today, a regional court in Germany ruled that Google is violating German copyright law by displaying thumbnail previews of copyrighted images. German photographer Michael Bernhard and cartoonist Thomas Horn had sued Google and demanded that their images be removed from Google's index. According to the judge at Hamburg's regional court, "no new work is created" by displaying thumbnails.
Google, of course, has no way of discerning whether an image in its index is copyrighted or not. Based on this decision, we would not be surprised if Google decided to block image search for German users. However, we also assume that Google will try to appeal this decision.
German vs. U.S. Law
In the U.S., Google has been involved in similar cases, including the infamous Perfect 10 v. Google case, where Perfect 10 claimed that Google's image previews were violating Perfect 10's copyright. While the U.S. courts first granted Perfect 10's requests to remove the images, Google won its appeal because the court argued that Google's use of the thumbnails was to be considered fair use.
Robots.txt Anybody?
We would think that photographers and cartoonists would be happy to have their images featured and promoted in Google's image search. Also, a quick edit of a website's robot.txt file would have prevented Google from indexing the images in the first place.
Comments
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Stupid germans ... should learn how to setup robots.txt and not bother courts ...
Posted by: Luke | October 13, 2008 12:28 PM
It's too easy to steal a photo or image without giving proper credit to its original author. We're all guilty of it at one time or another, even without malicious intent.
This will be an ongoing legal question for Google and will have to be battled through many courts in many countries.
Posted by: Allan | October 13, 2008 12:35 PM
website's robot.txt file would have
Posted by: arkadaşlık | October 13, 2008 12:48 PM
I doubt they have the same issue with being in the SERPs. If I were Google, I'd make sure to remove them from the entire index & see how long before they cave.
Posted by: Anrkist | October 13, 2008 2:59 PM
Copyright is an eternal theme on internet.
Posted by: sikantis | October 13, 2008 3:13 PM
What a pity. It's not convenient for the search engin user in Germany.
Strange Greman.
Posted by: gowers | October 13, 2008 6:35 PM
Well, if they're so hung up about copyright, let them disappear from the Web (which is effectively what happens when Google doesn't see you). That way there will be less idiots competing with us people who know how to share.
Amusingly enough, I just published a blog post on this general topic (and so did Lawrence Lessig, btw): http://my.opera.com/claudeb/blog/2008/10/11/how-to-end-the-copyright-craze
Posted by: Felix Pleşoianu | October 13, 2008 9:22 PM
I don't agree with what you say about robot.txt files.
Why should website owners go through an opt-in process (I decide I don't want Google to index my content and put restriction on my robot.txt file) and Google can afford to go throug opt-out ones (everything goes in my index and if you don't want it you can remove yourself).
This is an old mopnopolistic view, used in the past by Telcos, by Ad companies to spam you with what they wanted to send you.
Now all of us agree on the fact that this is wrong but if it's Google to do it, this is considered to be fair?
Posted by: Marco | October 14, 2008 6:30 AM
@Marco
Editing one robots.txt file to exclude some of your content from indexes is thousands of times easier than contacting each and every search provider. I mean, I'm pretty with it as a webdeveloper, but I'm betting there are search engines out there none of us here have ever used or even know about. I still want to be in those indexes (because I'm not stupid).
That is why the robots.txt was designed the way it was, and also why it works so well! Opt in from every website that wanted indexed would be lunacy!
Posted by: Alex | October 14, 2008 8:47 AM
thanks
Posted by: hortum | October 14, 2008 12:38 PM
Nope - photographers who get paid for the use of their photos have no interest in letting people grab thumnails and then use them on their websites or in presentations for free, which is the primary use case of Google Images.
People who pay to purchase rights to use images or cartoons don't go to Google Images to find them, so there is no incentive for high-end photographers to have their works surfaced there.
Posted by: John Billington | October 21, 2008 8:22 AM
From the article: "We would think that photographers and cartoonists would be happy to have their images featured and promoted in Google's image search. Also, a quick edit of a website's robot.txt file would have prevented Google from indexing the images in the first place. "
Agreed! If they are not so smart to begin with, how on earth did they make it all the way to court? Stupidity is the #1 leading cause of most lawsuits.Coffee anyone? Or should I warn you that it's hot?
Posted by: website design | October 23, 2008 9:11 AM