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But Google's business is actually 99.99% infringing. Everything is copyrighted, including but not limited to this website. (Under current U.S. law, Federal go

But Google's business is actually 99.99% infringing. Everything is copyrighted, including but not limited to this website. (Under current U.S. law, Federal government publications are nearly the only thing not copyrighted.) In no case has the copyright owner expressed permission for you to copy the copyrighted text to your computer. And yet, that is very very close to 100% of Google's business - locating copyrighted texts and sending users to them in order for those users to copy them, presumably illegally, to their computers. Only in the very rare case (.gov websites, users finding their own websites) is the user not infringing copyright. Nor is it possible for the user to determine whether he/she is infringing copyright; for example, the text on a .gov website could be written by a government contractor and therefore be copyrighted.

grellas 17y ago
I was not trying to defend the current law or any of its possible inconsistencies but only to give a sense of how it applies to this type of situation - as that law is currently interpreted, there is a near-zero risk that Google's search business will be held to create liabilities for contributory infringement. That doesn't mean the law is correct and people can reasonably differ on what is or isn't fair under copyright (or even whether copyright should exist) - but that argument is a philosophical one and not one for explaining what the current law is.
vidarh 17y ago
The copyright owner "expressed permission" for a limited degree of copying by making the content available on a publicly accessible website in a form intended for distribution and not utilizing any means to restrict the copying in the first place. Good luck finding any judge that'd agree with you that Google's business is "99.9% infringing".
metabrew 17y ago
It's worth reading this* paper by the EFF about legal exposure of p2p developers, it talks about contributory infringement and related topics. * http://www.eff.org/wp/iaal-what-peer-peer-developers-need-know-about-copyright-law http://www.eff.org/wp/iaal-what-peer-peer-developers-need-kn...

grellas 17y ago

I was not trying to defend the current law or any of its possible inconsistencies but only to give a sense of how it applies to this type of situation - as that law is currently interpreted, there is a near-zero risk that Google's search business will be held to create liabilities for contributory infringement. That doesn't mean the law is correct and people can reasonably differ on what is or isn't fair under copyright (or even whether copyright should exist) - but that argument is a philosophical one and not one for explaining what the current law is.

vidarh 17y ago

The copyright owner "expressed permission" for a limited degree of copying by making the content available on a publicly accessible website in a form intended for distribution and not utilizing any means to restrict the copying in the first place. Good luck finding any judge that'd agree with you that Google's business is "99.9% infringing".

metabrew 17y ago

It's worth reading this* paper by the EFF about legal exposure of p2p developers, it talks about contributory infringement and related topics. * http://www.eff.org/wp/iaal-what-peer-peer-developers-need-know-about-copyright-law http://www.eff.org/wp/iaal-what-peer-peer-developers-need-kn...