Google: Is it Illegal?
Is Google illegal? This is the claim made by lawyer pair Bruce W. Sanford and Bruce D. Brown, Industry lawyers who wrote numerous articles for various American newspapers. But is this claim justified?
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Sanford and Brown are not new to the copyright scene. About 6 months ago they wrote an article for the Washington Post, proposing new copyright laws to help newspapers, whilst destroying almost anything that makes the internet useful.
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The claim is based on a small part of commercial copyright law. The copyright code allows companies to copy texts as long as there are ‘no direct or indirect commercial advantages. But that does not describe what search engines do. They use the complete copies they take to sell the various advertising that has made them enormously profitable. Although this does have a direct affect, it is on the publishers and newspapers that are losing the advertising that once supported them.
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Perhaps Sanford and Brown are unfamiliar with the basic copyright law. The commercial advantage rule is only a small part of copyright law, and there are plenty of fair-use cases in commercial use. In fact, most newspaper companies use the fair-use as a defence when they print various articles – even though they are, in fact, commercial entities.
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Also, it appears that Sanford and Brown are either ignorant of how Google works, or are purposely misrepresenting it. In most news stories, Google has little ads. It’s only recently that Google has taken to advertising. If local companies are taking to advertising on Google, is that wrong? No. in fact, it is called competition. Why would 2 lawyers be against that?
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Ultimately, is Google illegal? All evidence points to no. Sanford and Brown seemed to have almost targeted Google, presumably to protect their big clients. These claims however, are completely unjustified, so should be treated as a bunch of nonsense.
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