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Google Loses ‘Thumbnail’ Copyright Cases in Germany  (View post)

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

Monday, October 13, 2008
15 years ago4,721 views

<<Bloomberg reports that Google has lost two related copyright cases in German courts. Both involved display of thumbnails in image search results. Google can appeal the rulings. According to Bloomberg, the German court in one of the cases found that copyright law had been violated because Google displayed images without permission of the copyright holder. [...]>>

http://searchengineland.com/google-loses-thumbnail-copyright-cases-in-germany-15060.php

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

As I just wondered on Friendfeed:

<<Google's preview of a picture by German photographer Michael Bernhard violates his copyrights, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled ... "It doesn't matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution,'' the court said in its ruling for Bernhard. "By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created,'' that may have justified displaying them without permission.>> (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a_C1wVkCvPww&refer=germany)
... is a search result a new work?

Above 2 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

George R [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Apparently Google plans to appeal.

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-google-loses-two-german-copyright-cases-over-image-search-thumbnails/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10064740-93.html

Tomas Kapler [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

I think it is very stupid – the author freely PUBLISH the information on the PUBLIC Internet (not "some internet", but Internet – standard TCP/IP, HTML, standardised crawling ...) and NOT USED the STANDARDISED WAY OF FORBIDDING of indexing and now protests, that google respects the standards. AAARGH. I'm so "proud" to live in "hyper-democratic" EU :-/

Robert~ [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Implicit permission is granted if you display your works in a public area. All the owner has to do is to tell Google via robot.txt is to not use the images. Making permission implicitly denied, which is what the quazi-nazi Hamburg court has done, makes the 99.9998% of the people of the world go through extra steps to allow images. I'm sorry, Germany, but you don't have the right to do that to me. I am dealing with a lot of content, all of which I want findable via image and text searches.

I'm sooo glad I don't live in the EU, where Germany's government seems to think it is holding its European reins from 70 years ago.

Maybe the next court will show intelligence. Otherwise, perhaps the rest of the world should simply block access to their servers from German access.

Andy Wong [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

These artists might win the right of copyright, but just lost the commercial interests through free advertisement provided Google. After winning the right, I am pretty sure these artists have less web traffic, and get less appreciation from viewers around the world.

The what's the point to publish their works on the web? what's the point to have the right of copyright?

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