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> It’s completely illegal if you think about it. Google would argue (and they won in federal court versus the Author's Guild using this argument) that displayi
by Andrex 3y ago
> It’s completely illegal if you think about it.
Google would argue (and they won in federal court versus the Author's Guild using this argument) that displaying snippets of publicly-crawlable websites constitutes "fair use." Profitability weighs against fair use but it doesn't discount it outright.
They would also probably cite robots.txt as an easy and widely-accepted "opt-out" method.
Overall, I'm not sure any court would rule against Google's use of snippets for search. And since Google's been around for over 20 years and they haven't lost a lawsuit over it, I don't think it's accurate to say "it's completely illegal if you think about it."
US copyright law is one of those things that might seem simple, but really isn't. Hence many of the copyright lawsuits clogging our judicial system.
- gtirloni 3y agoIt just likes a little imoral vs illegal confusion.
- remram 3y agoYou think search engines are immoral? You think we should pay to view the snippets under the results we don't click?
- gtirloni 3y agoNo, I'm saying even though some thing is legal, it could still be imoral. And vice-versa.
- ang_cire 3y agoI don't think we should pay, I think Google should. They're the ones making profit.
- remram 3y agoThe result of that is either that they wouldn't show snippets or that they would pass the cost on to you. And do you think they profit from showing the snippets of results that are not the result you want to click on?
- coding123 3y agoWell it's because judges are humans and humans are fallible. Humans also "like google" because it makes their life easier. It's hard to punish an entity you like.
- seanhunter 3y agoIf I was a gambling person I would say that interpretation of fair use is going to fall in the next 20 years as there is just too much weight put on it currently, and AI is just going to make it untenable in its current form. In addition, the fair use test contains a pillar about the use not affecting the market for the copyright holder's works[1] which I think in google's case (and probably in the current openAI case too) seems obviously not to have worked out (ie google's use has demonstrably negatively affected the market for the original copyrighted work in cases such as news for example). [1]: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
- account42 3y ago> ie google's use has demonstrably negatively affected the market for the original copyrighted work in cases such as news for example Most news sites wouldn't get any traffic without search engines and aggegrators. Which is why they are now whining about FB et al no longer sending them traffic. And let's not forget that both traditional and online news is no stranger to republishing other people's content - one of the reasons fair use exists in the first place. I have no love for big tech but let's not pretent that this is about anything other than news publishers wanting more gibs.