Google To Publishers: We're Not Evil

(CNET)  This story was written by CNET's Caroline McCarthy.

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A day after the editor of The Wall Street Journal referred to online news aggregators--particularly Google and its Google News product--as "parasites or tech tapeworms," and the chairman of the Associated Press announced an initiative to protect print media content from infringing use online, Google has fired back in a blog.

The gist of Tuesday's blog post, penned by Google associate general counsel Alexander Macgillivray: don't point fingers at us.

"We show snippets and links under the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the United States Copyright Act," he wrote. "Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rightsholder, in this case newspaper or wire service, to remove their content from our index--all they have to do is ask us or implement simple technical standards."

As for the AP, Macgillivray noted that Google already pays the wire service to reprint its articles and photographs. A dispute several years ago led to this agreement.

Of course, Google News is far from the only aggregator out there. Digg, Drudge Report, and the Huffington Post are also big players. But Google is unquestionably at the top.

For the past few years, as many mainstream media outlets (particularly on the print side) began to lose revenue, influence, and readership, some of them had a pretty clear message: blame Google. At the same time, Viacom still has a billion-dollar lawsuit against Google's YouTube over pirated video content. And much of the publishing industry is far from signing on to Google's book digitization initiative.

With struggling newspapers in a panic over whether offering content online for free might not have been such a good idea in the first place, Google--the ultimate source of free content--is an even easier target.

But Google says it's part of the solution, not the problem, and insists that its search and aggregation products only serve to help drive traffic to online news sites.

"Users like me are sent from different Google sites to newspaper websites at a rate of more than a billion clicks per month," Macgillivray said in his post. "These clicks go to news publishers large and small, domestic and international -- day and night."

By Caroline McCarthy

[Razzl]

The principle here is pretty simple; if the link opens up the original provider's page, then the aggregator is doing them a favor and there is no violation. If the link is opening up within the aggregator's pages (except when the original page with all its advertising and formatting is reproduced within a frame), then it's clearly a misuse. If only a part of the content opens in the aggregators' pages, in the form of a lead paragraph or two (such as the Wall Street Journal's articles when a non-member reads their pages), then they are within copyright. Google has persistently fought against the true spirit of copyright and need to lose a few battles to set them straight on the limits of their power...

[neo267-2009]

A bunch of clowns trying to protect their jobs in a dying industry.

[timothyww]

Goodle the ANT-CHRIST????? Because it does everything so much better than the paper wasters who have never once reported on crooked car dealers because car lots are their main advertisers???? How about the papers that supported Bush and the GOP in their attack and murder of IRAQ???
The media deserves to wither and die for representing so many rich, evil people for so many years. I doubt the new boys will turn out much better, but their time will pass as well!