While not commenting directly on the Belgian case, Google has published a defence of its approach to content on its official blog. The crux of the argument is that Google does respect copyright. It says:
Content creators deserve to be rewarded for their creative work -- and copyright law is fundamental to ensuring that as well as fostering future creativity. While protecting the rights of owners, those laws also encourage others to make use of content in limited ways. That's why newspapers are allowed to include short quotations from in-copyright books in their reviews. That's also why search engines can show snippets (small excerpts) of text in their results. Copyright owners benefit from these types of usage because they help to publicize their works.
That seems to me a reasonable defence of Google News where you have to go to the original site to read the story. It ignores the fact that, in the main index, you can often get all you need from Google's cache. However, I suspect most people really like the cache, and I find it extremely helpful.
The other core question is whether sites should have to opt in or opt out. Google argues the positive side:
Of course, some people argue that we should be asking content owners to opt in, not requiring them to opt out. Google aims to provide comprehensive search results. This would be impossible in a world where permission simply to index (which is entirely legal) was necessary. But we also believe that opt-out rather than opt-in benefits not just Google users, but also content owners. If content isn't indexed it can't be searched. And if it can't be searched, how can it be found? Imagine a library with no index of titles or subjects of the books on its shelves, or no catalogue of the authors who wrote them.
Given that the net is being indexed automatically by software, verifying the results by asking people to opt in is clearly out of the question. You can't phone a billion sites, even if you could find out who you had to phone in the first place. But there isn't really a problem here. Anybody who wants to opt out can easily use a robots.txt file that tells web spiders not to index their pages.
The problem is that things that are useful, sensible and good for the community may not necessarily be legal under any particular law court's interpretation of copyright laws. Some people think the law is an ass (see Alistair Dunning's piece at The Institute of Historical Research site at the University of London) and that "fair use" itself is under threat (see Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law).
This week, according to ZD Net, the British Library called for a "serious updating" of current copyright law to "unambiguously" include digital content and take technological advances into account. The story says:
"Unless there is a serious updating of copyright law to recognize the changing technological environment, the law becomes an ass," Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, told ZDNet UK.
Comment: How highly do you rate the chances of either the US or UK governments acting for the good of the people on copyright and fair use? Don't hold your breath.
