"A coalition of major recording companies Friday sued the operators of LimeWire for alleged copyright infringement, claiming that the firm encourages users of the popular online file-sharing software to trade music without permission, an industry organization said," according to the LA Times.
How long before Google is sued for piracy as well?
This week, "Google has agreed to pay the Associated Press for use of its news stories and pictures, according to a statement released by the two companies," reports CNet, and AFP has a case in progress. The nude photo site Perfect 10 got an injunction on the grounds that Google image search probably infringes copyright law "by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs." Google's book-scanning efforts are also under attack.
All in all, there are quite a few copyright tussles and there will probably be many more.
Of course, any case that can be won against Google can presumably be won against Yahoo, Microsoft and other search engines, too.
So where will it end? I can't see any practicable means whereby every search engine could pay for everything in its index. I also can't see that the Web will be anything like as useful if there are no search engines....
