Hi All

Just found this online. Google is being sued for copyright infrigement for allowing its image search to show stolen copyrighted pictures and for listing sites that have hacked passwords to adult sites.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...972363685.html

CAL

The company sues everybody. Google will body slam them before breakfast and go back to f**king up the SERPs trying to befuddle SEO types.

I don't think they can do G any harm. I do think that this whole mess with suing everybody around for copyright infringement is a big problem.

I think that sueing is just a marketing tool. They buy a cheap lawyer that is fresh out of school, knowing they will lose a frivolous (sp?) lawsuit, and get tonnes of media hype in the process.

I don't think this is a bad idea. It's probably worth the effort if you can find a cheap enough lawyer, and if you can create the hype behind it.

Umm.. Some people are so thick!

The idea would be prosecute the person publishing the Passwords not Sueing Google!

They wont have no chance with Google.. It will be covered somewhere under the privacy policy or whatever that Google can not control what is on the sites..

And the person shoulfnt have puclished it in the first place!

--James

Did u guys hear about this old saying - "When money comes you way, law suits follow". NO? Well, wait for sometime and it will be OLD. Seems like this is exactly what has happened to google.
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well.....

I think the implications of this situation go a lot further than most would think.

The problem is that a website owner can have copyright protected images and content copied by Google through no folt of their own. Just by having a link pointing to your site from a page within the Google index will lead Googlebot to your site and thus index your copyright protected content. This is something outside of the owners control and no permission has been granted.

What this would mean is a radical change in the way Google finds and adds new sites to the index. Basically they would not be able to index any new site they come across until permission is granted.

Will we be going back to the old days of submission with terms and agreements.

Food for thought!

Personally I do not think that this can even touch google. It is not their fault that they have indexed websites which have illegal content. All google does is following links. It was not intentionally done, nor is in google's intentions to do this.

The publicity behind such a suit is what's causing these actions. Similar to the threats SCO was issuing.

User-Agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/

If a site wants google to not index its copywrited images, then they should simply place the code above into the robots.txt file. This will keep the googlebot from indexing those images.

Secondly, if a website does not wish to be included in the indexing, they can request it from google.

Finally, if a site is reported as having illegal content, google will ban the site IMMEDIATELY!

Personally, I don't like google adsense, but their search technology is second to none.

If these sites don't want their copywrited material indexed, they need to control googlebot with robots.txt, request not to be included, or just shut up!

Originally Posted by neorunner

User-Agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/

If a site wants google to not index its copywrited images, then they should simply place the code above into the robots.txt file. This will keep the googlebot from indexing those images.

Secondly, if a website does not wish to be included in the indexing, they can request it from google.

Finally, if a site is reported as having illegal content, google will ban the site IMMEDIATELY!

Personally, I don't like google adsense, but their search technology is second to none.

If these sites don't want their copywrited material indexed, they need to control googlebot with robots.txt, request not to be included, or just shut up!

Yep that is a way of stoping Google from breaking the copyright act but it would be like expecting someone to wear a T-shirt saying "please don't kill me" and if they didn't, got killed, saying that the killer is not responsible because they could of prevented it by wearing a T-shirt they knew nothing about.

Silly comparison No.2

Or like designing a robot that walks into a store and helps it self to the contents. You could say that it is the shops fault for not using screens to stop the robot from being able to get to the contents.

We are accountable for our own actions and are not accountable for others!

ok, both of those examples are off base. Both use criminal behavior. I think a store that has a sign that is no shoe no service would expect you to wear shoes.
One would no sign should not kick you out.
There was no sign, Google came in. They didn't kill or steal. They acted in the acceptable way as described by the norms that dictate internet behavior.

So is copyright theft not criminal behavior?

Google would never go down!

The appropriate way to deal with stolen copyrighted content is to first contact the website asking them to remove it.

Look for contact details on the offending site and send a polite message asking for the material to be removed. If there are no contact details available, try emailing webmaster@ the domain.

Use a Whois service to find out the website owner's name and telephone number and contact them directly. Enter the domain name in the search box and the contact information should appear towards the bottom of the page.

Contact the web hosting company used by the site and inform them of their customer's abuse. This information is also available through a Whois search.

Send a formal 'Cease and Desist' letter notifying the offending party that they must remove the stolen content from their site. Some sample letters are available on the web.

File a notice of Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) infringement with search engines such as Google and others to have the offending site removed from their search results.

If you need proof of infringement, you can use the Internet Archive to show that the content appeared on your site at an earlier date than it appeared on the offending site.

I think the courts will see the situation for what it is, and not what they're claiming it is.