German Publishers Grant Google A 'Free License' Google Never Needed To Post News Snippets

from the well-that-solves-that dept

Remember earlier this year when German newspaper publishers, led by rights management firm VG Media, demanded Google pay them a massive amount of money (11% of all ad revenue on any page linking to their works) for having the gall to send those publishers traffic via Google News? VG Media insisted that Google’s use of “snippets” was illegal. German regulators rejected this demand, but VG Media was still pursuing legal efforts to force Google to pay. Given that, Google did what made the most sense and removed the snippets for VG Media associated publishers. You’d think that this would make VG Media happy. Instead, it claimed that Google was engaged in “blackmail.”

Yes, VG Media claimed that using snippets was illegal, but getting rid of them was “blackmail.” The logic of a legacy industry.

Taking that logic one step further, VG Media has now decided to (and I’m not making this up) grant Google a “free license” to let Google use the snippets. This whole thing was about money in the first place, and now VG Media isn’t getting any money… and it looks ridiculous and foolish for having tried this in the first place. The end result is the same: snippets are in Google News, VG Media publications are getting traffic, but VG Media has made itself look silly.

Filed Under: germany, google news, snippets
Companies: google, vg media

Google Continues To Try To Appease Hollywood, Though It Is Unlikely To Ever Be Enough

from the because-of-course-not dept

Google has come out with the latest version of its “How Google Fights Piracy” report (pdf link), going to great lengths to show how the company goes above and beyond what is required by law to try to drive people to authorized copies of content while also increasing opportunities for content creators to monetize their own content. There really aren’t too many surprises in the report — it just looks like an extension of what they’ve said in the past. The company is apparently about to roll out an update to its program that “downranks” certain sites based on how many DMCA notices it gets — something that’s been a huge point of contention from the RIAA and MPAA. In effect Google is basically saying to the major music and movie companies: you guys still haven’t figured out how to optimize your content for search engines (like nearly everyone else online) so, fuck it, we’ll do it for you if you’ll just stop these ridiculous accusations. Of course, it’s unlikely to work.

Just this week James Murdoch insisted, incorrectly, that search engines love piracy because it brings them revenue. This has never made any sense at all, but it’s a myth that flows through the legacy entertainment industry. How Google actually makes any money from those links is never explained, because there isn’t an answer. And the question of why the industry doesn’t do a better job getting its own content more highly ranked is ignored as well.

And, of course, there’s a real risk that by strengthening the “signalling” power of DMCA notices, what Google is really doing is giving the legacy players a tool for search engine “de-optimization”, so that rather than improving their own offerings, they now have every incentive in the world to just file a bunch of DMCA notices against sites they don’t like. This is why there’s reasonable fear from many that this new move by Google will actually lead to an increase in bogus DMCA notices that result in legitimate content being censored.

But, here’s the thing: as we said when Google first came out with this report, it will never be enough for the legacy guys in Hollywood. That’s because they incorrectly blame Google for their own inability to adapt to the changing market. They blame their diminishing revenue on Google, and even as Google makes it harder and harder to find unauthorized content, that revenue isn’t going to come back… so they’ll still blame Google. But Google was never the problem. The legacy entertainment industry and its political supporters will continue to point to search results that don’t exist and search terms that are never used as some sort of “proof” because that’s what they do. Rather than adapt, they really just want Google to do things for them. And for whatever reason, Google is doing more and more… and it’s unlikely to ever please the likes of James Murdoch, because Google “not doing things” was never the real problem.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, hollywood, piracy, search engines, takedowns
Companies: google

Not Just Governments Hacking Your Computers Via YouTube Videos; Malicious Ads Found On Popular Videos

from the danger-danger dept

Over the summer, a research report came out detailing how “lawful intercept” offerings from Hacking Team and FinFisher could be used to hack computers via YouTube videos. YouTube quickly closed the vulnerability that enabled this (a man-in-the-middle attack on non-SSL’d videos), but it appears that criminals are still figuring out ways to use YouTube videos to hack your computer. The latest trick: exploiting ads on popular YouTube videos:

This was a worrying development: not only were malicious ads showing up on YouTube, they were on videos with more than 11 million views ? in particular, a music video uploaded by a high-profile record label.

The ads we?ve observed do not directly lead to malicious sites from YouTube. Instead, the traffic passes through two advertising sites, suggesting that the cybercriminals behind this campaign bought their traffic from legitimate ad providers.

In order to make their activity look legitimate, the attackers used the modified DNS information of a Polish government site. The attackers did not compromise the actual site; instead they were able to change the DNS information by adding subdomains that lead to their own servers. (How they were able to do this is unclear.)

The traffic passes through two redirection servers (located in the Netherlands) before ending up at the malicious server, located in the United States.

The target here: computers using Internet Explorer (based on our stats, this means that most of the people reading this site were safe from this particular attack). Once again, we see how scammers are using traditional ad networks to do nefarious things. And yet publishers still wonder why so many people decide to use ad blockers.

Filed Under: ads, malicious ads, scammers, videos, youtube
Companies: google

YouTube Has Paid $1 Billion To Copyright Holders Via ContentID; What Happened To Stories About It Destroying Content?

from the curious... dept

Remember those days when YouTube was “killing” the entertainment industry. You don’t even have to look back very far. There are artists who still insist that YouTube is killing creativity and is nothing but a den of piracy. Viacom spent years trying to argue that YouTube was the equivalent of Napster, but for video, until that lawsuit finally settled just a few months ago.

However, reality is looking pretty different these days. A couple months ago, Businessweek had a big cover story about how YouTube has become Hollywood’s “hit factory”, and just this week, YouTube revealed that its ContentID program, which allows copyright holders to monetize unauthorized uses of their works, had paid out over $1 billion since its inception. This isn’t to say there aren’t problems with ContentID. We’ve noted in the past the problems with false flagging, revenue diversion and other issues — but the simple fact is that it appears to be making money for content creators. Actually, quite a lot of money.

And this brings us back to a key point that we’ve hit on over and over and over again: given a chance to operate, these business models tend to come about without the need to pass draconian copyright laws and without the need to completely takedown and destroy businesses. When allowed to thrive, innovate and experiment, it’s only natural that workable business models develop. We’ve seen it over and over again in the industry. The recording industry insisted radio was going to kill the entire industry — and then it made the industry into a massive juggernaut. The movie industry insisted that the VCR would be its “Boston Strangler,” but four years later home video outpaced the box office in generating revenue for the studios.

The continuous claims of “Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley” on copyright issues is so clearly bogus. As we’ve argued for years, it’s the innovations of the tech industry that keep saving the entertainment industry over and over and over again. There’s no “war” between the two when it appears that Silicon Valley is the one supplying the “weapons” that’s making Hollywood very, very wealthy.

But when will those folks in Hollywood learn this? Instead, they keep attacking these new services, demanding more copyright “enforcement” and blocking these forms of innovation. Who knows what other innovations might have occurred had the industry not shut down Veoh. Or Grokster. Before the US government completely shut down Megaupload, it was experimenting with new revenue models were attracting the interest of lots of famous musicians. Imagine if that had been allowed to continue. Who knows what other kinds of cool business models would be in place today making more money for artists.

Attacking innovation seems to be the legacy entertainment industry’s default position, no matter how many times that innovation actually opens up new markets, provides new revenue streams and makes pretty much everyone better off. Oh, except some of the gatekeepers. Those guys tend not to be able to keep quite as much of the revenue generated by these new platforms. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the real reason they’re so angry about innovation.

Filed Under: business models, contentid, copyright, culture, experiments, hollywood, innovation, silicon valley, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

Supreme Court Asked To Make It Clear That APIs Are Not Copyrightable

from the fingers-crossed dept

Back in May, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), long famous for messing up patent law, decided to take a short break and mess up copyright law as well, by declaring APIs copyrightable (the case ended up before CAFC instead of the 9th Circuit because it originated as a patent case, even though all the patent issues were gone). The district court had ruled otherwise, and that judge, William Alsup, had actually gone into great detail to explain why copyright shouldn’t apply to APIs. Alsup had learned to code Java to better understand the case, and you could basically tell from his ruling that he was quite worried that appeals court judges wouldn’t take the time to truly understand the issues at play. He was right. Making APIs copyrightable is bad news for innovation in a variety of ways.

But, of course, CAFC is not the final stop in the line (even if some patent trolls wish it were). As was fully expected, Google has now asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal on the case. Google’s petition is a good read highlighting the “disarray” in the various different circuits about whether or not copyright law applies to APIs. The law itself (Section 102(b)) is pretty explicit: “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.” Many of us clearly think that APIs fit under this as a system or method of operation. But, others disagree.

Some courts follow the statute?s plain meaning, holding that Section 102(b) precludes copyright protection for all systems or methods of operation, including those in computer programs. See, e.g., Lotus, 49 F.3d at 815. Like the Federal Circuit, however, other courts have rejected the statutory text and held that Section 102(b) is merely a reminder of the dichotomy between ideas (which are not copyrightable) and expressions of ideas (which generally are). See, e.g., Whelan Assocs., Inc. v. Jaslow Dental Lab., Inc., 797 F.2d 1222, 1234 (3d Cir. 1986). In those courts? view, a ?method of operation? embodied in a computer program is copyrightable so long as its creator could have designed it in different ways.

Having shown the circuit split to help entice the Supreme Court to hear the case, Google then explains why it’s simply wrong to interpret the law to say that APIs are covered by copyright.

The Federal Circuit?s error is confirmed by the extent to which it would eliminate a fundamental distinction between patent and copyright law?and thus allow copyright to be used as an end-run around the limits on patent protection, including this Court?s recent decisions on patent-eligibility.

Basically, you may be able to patent a system and method (as many patents themselves note in their titles), but it shouldn’t be copyrightable.

While the Supreme Court has a history of being pretty bad on copyright law, it has been pretty good (especially lately) on patent law — in particular smacking down CAFC — and the Google filing plays up to that fact, arguing that this is just another case of CAFC interpreting the law incorrectly.

The Federal Circuit?s error is all the more glaring because it is essentially the same error for which this Court has repeatedly reversed the Federal Circuit in patent cases. The court of appeals criticized the district court for confusing ?the threshold question of what is copyrightable?which presents a low bar?and the scope of conduct that constitutes infringing activity.? App. 17. It then transformed Section 102(b)?s limits on copyright eligibility into just one of several factors to be considered as part of a fair-use defense….

The Federal Circuit had similarly held that the limits on patent eligibility are minimal and that other requirements of the Patent Act do the real work in limiting monopoly protections. See, e.g., Research Corp. Techs., Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 627 F.3d 859, 869 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (referring to Section 101 of the Patent Act as a ?coarse eligibility filter?). This Court has repeatedly corrected that misperception in recent years, stressing the importance of enforcing Section 101?s limits on patentable subject matter?including for software-related patents. See, e.g., Alice, 134 S. Ct. 2347; Ass?n for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2107 (2013); Mayo, 132 S. Ct. 1289; Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S. Ct. 3218 (2010). But the Federal Circuit would now eviscerate the analogous limitation on copyright eligibility for some of the same types of works.

Hopefully the Supreme Court recognizes this, takes the case and… (most importantly) doesn’t make things worse.

Filed Under: apis, cafc, copyright, supreme court
Companies: google, oracle

Tech Execs Express Extreme Concern That NSA Surveillance Could Lead To 'Breaking' The Internet

from the moral,-economic-and-patriotic dept

As mentioned, on Wednesday I attended a tech exec panel held at Palo Alto High School (in the high school gym, which was a weird sort of setting for such a high powered gathering of folks — complete with gym echoes, and school bells buzzing, at one point leading a bunch of students to stream out to lunch just as Google’s Eric Schmidt started talking). You can see the video of the event here where the sound is actually much, much clearer than in the gym itself, where the buzzing old lights made it nearly impossible to hear half of the panelists).

Nothing necessarily earth-shattering was said by anyone, but it did involve a series of high powered tech execs absolutely slamming the NSA and the intelligence community, and warning of the vast repercussions from that activity, up to and including potentially splintering or “breaking” the internet by causing people to so distrust the existing internet, that they set up separate networks on their own.

The execs repeated the same basic points over and over again. They had been absolutely willing to work with law enforcement when and where appropriate based on actual court orders and review — but that the government itself completely poisoned the well with its activities, including hacking into the transmission lines between overseas datacenters. Thus, as Eric Schmidt noted, if the NSA and other law enforcement folks are “upset” about Google and others suddenly ramping up their use of encryption and being less willing to cooperate with the government, they only have themselves to blame for completely obliterating any sense of trust.

Microsoft’s Brad Smith, towards the end, made quite an impassioned plea — it sounded more like a politician’s stump speech — about the need for rebuilding trust in the internet. It’s at about an hour and 3 minutes into the video. He points out that while people had expected Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act, the rise of ISIS and other claimed threats has some people scared, but, he notes:

We need to look the world’s dangers in the face. And we need to resolve that we will not allow the dangers of the world to freeze this country in its tracks. We need to recognize that antiquated laws will not keep the public safe. We need to recognize that laws that the rest of the world does not respect will ultimately undermine the fundamental ability of our own legal processes, law enforcement agencies and even the intelligence community itself. At the end of the day, we need to recognize… the one asset that the US has which is even stronger than our military might is our moral authority. And this decline in trust, has not only effected people’s trust in American technology products. It has effected people’s willingness to trust the leadership of the United States. If we are going to win the war on terror. If we are going to keep the public safe. If we are going to improve American competitiveness, we need Congress to stay on the path it’s set. We need Congress to finish in December the job the President put before Congress in January.

It was a good talk, and it basically was a chance for all these tech execs to express similar concerns and to do so loudly. It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that the tech industry was complacent on these issues in the past, that they were too trusting (often way too trusting) of the government, that they should have started from a position of distrust and should have encrypted everything possible from the get go. Frankly, those are very legitimate criticisms. But, it’s pretty clear that these tech companies are now pissed off at the government and the fact that it undermined everything, including their own businesses around the globe — and they’re determined to win back the trust of the public, whether or not the government is willing to cooperate. I find that encouraging, though I’d still like to see pretty much all of the companies do even more on the encryption front.

As I said, there wasn’t anything earth shattering, but it’s clear that these companies have all seen the impact from the government’s overbroad surveillance efforts, and they’re not just concerned about it from their direct bottom line, but what it means for the overall internet. Multiple execs talked about not just moral authority, as Smith mentioned, but the moral imperative to use the internet to create greater connectivity and raise the ability of people around the globe — and how much more difficult the NSA had made things.

I know that some cynical folks will claim this is all for show. But there is a real concern that comes across here about just how devastating the NSA’s actions have been (and continue to be). Schmidt was absolutely right that if law enforcement and the intelligence community is upset about it, they only have themselves to blame.

Filed Under: brad smith, economy, eric schmidt, nsa, ron wyden, surveillance, trust
Companies: google, microsoft

Right To Be Forgotten Hits The NY Times

from the the-paper-of-record dept

Over the weekend, the NY Times revealed that it is the latest publication to receive notification from Google that some of its results will no longer show up for searches on certain people’s names, under the whole “right to be forgotten” nuttiness going on in Europe these days. As people in our comments have pointed out in the past, it’s important to note that the stories themselves aren’t erased from Google’s index entirely — they just won’t show up when someone searches on the particular name of the person who complained. Still, the whole effort is creating a bit of a Streisand Effect in calling new attention to the impacted articles.

In this case, the NY Times was notified of five articles that were caught up in the right to be forgotten process. Three of the five involved semi-personal stuff, so the Times decided not to reveal what those stories were (even as it gently mocks Europe for not believing in free speech):

Of the five articles that Google informed The Times about, three are intensely personal ? two wedding announcements from years ago and a brief paid death notice from 2001. Presumably, the people involved had privacy reasons for asking for the material to be hidden.

I can understand the Times’ decision not to reveal those articles, but it still does seem odd. You can understand why people might not want their wedding announcements findable, but they were accurate at the time, so it seems bizarre to have them no longer associated with your name.

The other two stories, however, again reveal the more questionable nature of this process:

One Times article that is being shielded from certain searches in Europe is a report from 2002 about a decision by a United States court to close three websites that the federal government accused of selling an estimated $1 million worth of unusable Web addresses. The complaint named three British companies, TLD Network, Quantum Management and TBS Industries, as well as two men who it said controlled the companies: Thomas Goolnik and Edward Harris Goolnik of London.

The case was later settled. Thomas Goolnik did not respond to messages left via social networking sites.

Now, if the request was sent in by one of the Goolnik’s, it seems especially questionable. The fact that they were involved in a legal dispute is relevant factual information, even if it was eventually settled.

As for the other article…

In the last of The Times articles, a feature about a 1998 production of ?Villa Villa? by the ensemble called De la Guarda, it was much harder to divine the objection. Not a review, the article explored how the antic, acrobatic show was managing ?to get a generation raised on MTV interested in seeing live theater.?

It’s unclear from that article what someone is upset about. There are a few people named (though many are Americans who aren’t supposed to be filing for such requests). And, even with the quotes it’s difficult to see how any of them could upset someone. The only thing that caught my eye is that the story quotes a “27-year-old art student” named Feliz Skamser. Skamser’s quote is innocuous “It was like a dream, only more intense,” but the very same sentence awkwardly inserts a quote from The Guardian (not from Skamser) calling the show “theater as good as sex.” If people read the sentence quickly, perhaps some might think that Skamser said that latter quote — and perhaps she was annoyed that people were associating her with a quote about sex? Or maybe she just doesn’t want people to know she went to the theater? A search on her name will turn up that story on the American Google, but not the UK Google.

Once again, though, we’re left wondering how this setup makes any sense at all. If the information was accurate at the time, then why should it be removed?

Filed Under: europe, right to be forgotten
Companies: google, ny times

Another Police Chief Says Phone Encryption Is A Pedophile's Best Friend

from the public-suffers-third-degree-stupidity-burns dept

More law enforcement officials are coming forward to express their dismay at Apple’s and Google’s decision to encrypt cellphones by default. And the hysteria seems to be getting worse. As was recently covered, FBI director James Comey stated that no one was above the law, while failing to realize there’s actually no law preventing Apple or Google from doing this.

The chief of the Chicago police went even further:

“Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago’s police department. “The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone.”

Now, Washington DC’s police chief, Cathy Lanier (who we’ve praised previously for her implementation and enforcement of a tough [on cops] citizen recording policy) is echoing Escalante’s ridiculous statement.

“This is a very bad idea,” said Cathy Lanier, chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, in an interview. Smartphone communication is “going to be the preferred method of the pedophile and the criminal. We are going to lose a lot of investigative opportunities.”

First off, law enforcement rarely ever encounters encryption. These facts are borne out by the US Courts’ annual statistics on warrant requests. That they’ll encounter it more often from now on has nothing to do with the scary stories they’ve been telling to justify their collective freakout. Those criminals didn’t use it, for the most part. And if they did, it was circumvented nearly 100% of the time.

Second, implying that pedophiles are suddenly going to start buying iPhones/Androids is a non-starter. Plenty of encryption options already exist and most pedophiles and criminals already own cellphones. Police have captured plenty of criminals and pedophiles without cracking encryption. See “first off” above.

Third, and this is where the irony sets in, Lanier’s department is a big fan of encryption. From 2011:

D.C. police became one of the latest departments to adopt the practice [encrypting police radio communications] this fall. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said recently that a group of burglars who police believe were following radio communications on their smartphones pulled off more than a dozen crimes before ultimately being arrested and that drug dealers fled a laundromat after a sergeant used his radio to call in other officers — suggesting that they, too, might have been listening in.

“Whereas listeners used to be tied to stationary scanners, new technology has allowed people — and especially criminals — to listen to police communications on a smartphone from anywhere,” Lanier testified at a D.C. Council committee hearing this month. “When a potential criminal can evade capture and learn, ‘There’s an app for that,’ it’s time to change our practices.”

Journalist wondered what sort of impact this decision would have on public safety, if only certain individuals were allowed to hear as-it-happens discussions of dangerous events. All the cops could think about was the ones that got away. Now the encryption’s on the other end and the police are using both the public safety argument and counting their escaped criminals before they’ve actually escaped justice.

I guess encryption only works for the government. All others need not apply. Lanier’s statement — combined with the DCPD’s encrypted transmissions — means she only wants to encrypt the communications of the department’s “pedophiles and criminals.”

Now, going back to James Comey complaining about Apple and Google being above the law. Nothing that exists can legally prevent them from providing this encryption to their customers… at least for now. Surfing high on a wave of hysteria, former FBI Counsel Andrew Weissman has arrived to push for exactly that: new laws.

“They have created a system that is a free-for-all for criminals,” said Weissmann, a law professor at New York University. “It’s the wrong balancing act. Having court-ordered access to telephones is essential to thwart criminal acts and terrorist acts.”

Weissmann said there was little the Justice Department could do to stop the emerging policies. The companies are permitted to have encryption systems. The only way to ensure law enforcement access is for Congress to pass legislation, he said.

The answer to a move prompted by the exposure of government overreach is… more government overreach. Weissman’s horrendous idea will find some sympathetic ears in Congress, but not nearly as many as it would have found a few years ago. Any legislation prompted by law enforcement officials’ iPedophile hallucinations will be decidedly terrible and loaded with negative side effects and collateral damage.

And let’s not forget that, since the beginning of criminal activity, there have always been panics about new technology placing ne’er-do-wells ahead of pursuing flatfoots. Here’s one from 1922, pointed out by the ACLU’s Chris Soghoian:

Here’s a text version:

The automobile is a swift and powerful vehicle of recent development, which has multiplied by quantity production and taken possession of our highways in battalions, until the slower, animal-drawn vehicles, with their easily noted individuality, are rare. Constructed as covered vehicles to standard form in immense quantities, and with a capacity for speed rivaling express trains, they furnish for successful commission of crime a disguising means of silent approach and swift escape unknown in the history of the world before their advent. The question of their police control and reasonable search on highways or other public places is a serious question.

The baffling extent to which they are successfully utilised to facilitate commission of crime of all degrees, from those against morality, chastity, and decency to robbery, rape, burglary, and murder, is a matter of common knowledge. Upon that problem a condition and not a theory confronts proper administration of our criminal laws.

Law enforcement techno-panic. Dating all the way back to the “silent approach” of a 1920’s-era internal combustion engine.

Filed Under: cathy lanier, fud, phone encryption
Companies: android, google

Google Removes News Snippets From Complaining Publications In Germany; Publications Claim It's 'Blackmail'

from the let's-see-how-that-goes dept

Earlier this year, we noted a somewhat ridiculous and cynical attempt by some German newspapers to demand payment from Google for sending them traffic via Google News — and not just a little bit, but 11% of gross worldwide revenue on any search that showed one of their snippets. There were a few issues that we noted here: first, anyone not wanting to appear in Google News can quite easily opt-out. Second, Google News in Germany doesn’t show any ads. Third, those very same newspapers were using Google’s own tools to appear higher in search, suggesting that they certainly believed they were getting value out of being in Google’s index.

While German regulators rejected this request from the news publication industry group VG Media, Google has now decided to remove all news snippets from VG Media publications. It will still display results from those publications, but only in pure link/title format. Google claims it’s doing this to “remove [the] legal risks” from ongoing legal action from VG Media, but it seems equally likely that this will also decrease the traffic to those publishers’ websites.

As we’ve discussed in the past, years back under similar circumstances in Belgium, Google simply removed the complaining publications from its index, only to have those publications freak out and beg to be let back in, exposing the hypocrisy of those publishers, insisting that what Google was doing was somehow unfair.

Indeed, almost immediately, VG Media shot back that this is a form of “blackmail.” According to David Meyer at GigaOm:

“Google is discriminating in that they do not show snippets and thumbnails for publishers that made a claim, but they still show snippets and thumbnails from other publishers,” he said. “They’re trying to [apply] economic pressure.”

So… showing the snippets without payment is unfair and infringing. And, not showing the snippets is unfair and blackmail. Someone want to explain how any of this makes any sense other than that it’s just petty corporate jealousy that Google has made a lot of money and those publishers want some of it for nothing?

VG Media’s spokesperson seems to honestly think that there’s some sort of moral requirement for Google to both pay for and show snippets. Again from Meyer:

The spokesman said VG Media was still in talks with the regulator about the case, and would add a complaint about this latest move. But how does this move harm consumers? I asked him. ?Because they won?t have quality content in the future? if Google doesn?t pay for the snippets it uses, he claimed.

But surely Google actually helps publishers by sending traffic their way ? do the publishers really believe that anyone sees a sentence-or-two-long snippet in Google News and then goes ?Eh, that?s enough, I don?t need to click through??

It’s difficult to see how this is anything other than “We failed to develop our own business model, so the company that did ought to just give us money.”

Filed Under: blackmail, copyright, germany, google news, search, snippets
Companies: google, vg media

Lawyer For Victims Of Nude Celebrity Hacks Threatens Google With $100 Million Lawsuit

from the on-what-basis dept

So, by now you’ve heard about the various hacked and leaked photos of various celebrities, often in varying states of undress. You knew that legal action was going to follow, but… did anyone actually expect Google would be the initial target? Lawyer to the stars Marty Singer has sent a very angry, but legally shaky letter to Google, claiming the company is facing a $100 million (or more) lawsuit in failing to remove the photos. There are some oddities here. First, Singer fails to name anyone he’s actually representing, just generally referring to representing “over a dozen” of the victims. From there, Singer sort of implies copyright violations, but doesn’t fully go there, perhaps because it’s likely that the women in question don’t hold the copyright on many of the photos. In at least one case — involving photos of Kate Upton — it’s been widely reported that Google only removed about half of the links sent in a DMCA notice from Upton’s boyfriend, baseball star Justin Verlander, leading to quite reasonable speculation that Google is properly complying with the DMCA in only taking down photos where it’s clear there’s a legitimate copyright claim.

Singer’s threat letter is all over the place, partially arguing copyright infringement, partially arguing failure to follow the DMCA safe harbors and partially arguing straight up morality concerning blocking links to the images or videos containing the images. Let’s be clear: it’s quite reasonable for those who were victims here to be upset and seek to do something about it, but it’s bizarre to pin the blame on Google, which is merely the search engine that is helping to index what other people have done. Furthermore, while it may seem appealing to ask Google to make a pure moral judgment on whether or not it’s “right” for these photos to be accessible, it has no legal obligation to do so, outside of the copyright question — and Google has a pretty good history of showing that its copyright lawyers are very quick at taking down content that they truly deem infringing.

Frankly, this threat seems like a lot more bluster than legal certainty. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a lawsuit eventually result — Singer likes being in the limelight — but it’s difficult to see on what legitimate legal basis a lawsuit would be filed. It’s possible that Google may have missed a legitimate copyright-covered image from a takedown, but given its rather sophisticated handling of DMCA takedown notices, it seems unlikely that Google made many mistakes on this one. This just seems like a “Steve Dallas lawsuit” in which you go through all the options of who you can sue, and then just go after the big company because it’s the one that has the money.

Filed Under: copyright, hacking, marty singer, nude celebrities
Companies: google