fantomNews™ — the ultimate know

(rt) As has been widely reported, major French news agency Agence France Press (AFP) announced 2005-03-19 that it has filed a law suit in a Washington, D. C. court against Google, Inc. for copyright infringement, alleging that the search engine included AFP headlines, news summaries and photographs published without permission. AFP is seeking damages and interest of at least $17.5 million and an interdiction on the publication of its text and photos without prior agreement. Just like Reuters, AP and other agencies, AFP supplies its news services worldwide to various kinds of media, including publishers, both online and off. They currently have 600 online clients.

The allegation focuses on Google’s news aggregation service (“Google News”). Other reports indicate that AFP gave Google ample notice to stop infringing on their copyright but received no response. Both AFP and Google were not available for comment immediately following the news release.

Lots of industry observers have seen it coming for years: what this case actually impacts is not limited to two companies’ squabbling about what constitutes a copyright and usage infringement or not. Rather, the implications will likely be of a far more general nature, affecting the search engine industry in general as well as its ancillary services such as search engine optimization and marketing.

Because, what’s really at stake here is a score of fundamental legal issues ranging from the basic permissibility of search engines’ consuming web sites’ bandwidth without owners’ express permission via the legitimacy of caching copyright protected pages and displaying them within an unapproved context to a more precise definition of what constitutes “fair usage” – not to mention the intricacies of conflicting international laws and regulations, etc.

Google is actually stuck between a rock and hard place on this one: if they should agree to settle with AFP out of court – a very likely outcome in our view –, chances are that others will see this as a prime signal to join in the fray and go after Google’s deep pockets themselves, possibly leading to an avalanche of more or less frivolous litigation.

But the alternative is quite as unappealing: as it is generally assumed that Google’s case is a very weak one at best, losing in court may truly let the vultures loose wholesale.

We believe that Google is actually preparing for these expected developments and others: while their new submission page offers a graphical code submitters are requested to enter, this is still optional. Unlike AltaVista and other engines that implemented similar functions earlier to ward off automatic submissions, Google has imposed no such restriction to date. So they seem to be gathering data to gauge how much of a demand there is for automatic submissions out there – from which a business model might follow: charging companies for the privilege of being included in their index and getting their permission in the process, elegantly pulling the search engine out of the deep legal waters they are steering themselves into at present.

Let’s be clear that currently this is still mere speculation, albeit a highly probable one. Interesting times ahead.

Find AFP’s official news release here:
→ “AFP sues Google over copyright infringement”
And here’s Reuters’ summary on Yahoo!:
→ “Agence France Presse Sues Google Over News Site”
Follow the Threadwatch take on this affair here:
→ “Google News under Fire by French Press”

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