AFP Sues Google News For Copyright Infringement

[leftchick]

:crazy: I just read this on google!

http://www.overclockersclub.com/?read=1125002

Agence France Presse has sued Google for display their photo's, stories, and news headlines on Google News without permission. APF is seeking damages of around $17.5 million and is requesting the courts that Google News is not to display any of its copyrighted material. The suit was filed this past Thursday in the U.S District Court. According to AFP, they sell subscriptions to users for their content and Google News crawls these news articles and headlines and displays them on the Google News service.

"Without AFP's authorization, defendant is continuously and willfully reproducing and publicly displaying AFP's photographs, headlines and story leads on its Google News web pages," AFP said in its lawsuit. AFP has sent Google a cease and desist letter requesting them to stop infringing its copyrighted material. However, a federal appeals court in 2002 stated that 'Web sites may reproduce and post thumbnail copyrighted images'.

If AFP doesn't want their content on Google News, all they had to do was edit their robots.txt file on their web server and that would stop the Google News robot from crawling their 'subscription content'.

We could not reach a spokesperson from Google for comment. We'll keep you updated as the story unfolds.


...I am not familiare with this source so here is another link....

http://news.techwhack.com/1043/190305-google-sued-by-agence-france-presse-over-news-syndication-on-google-news/

[charlie]

1. That's why Google News is still beta

after all this time and doesn't carry revenue generators like ads. I think Google's been waiting to see if someone would react this way. There'll be more copyright kinks to work out before they can make it into a profitable service.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. Here's a CNET link to the piece.

Found it using google news :)

http://news.com.com/Agence+France+Presse+sues+Google+over+news+site/2100-1030_3-5626341.html

[President Jesus]

3. re: "If AFP doesn't want their content on Google News,"...

If AFP doesn't want their content on Google News, all they had to do was edit their robots.txt file on their web server and that would stop the Google News robot from crawling their 'subscription content'.

No, that's not the case.

AFP, like AP, does not have their on news web site (save a handful of tiny wire stories). If they did, then they could do the robots.txt thing. They license out their content to numerous publications that publish under their own individual brands, and it's to those publishers that Google links.

AFP is really being stupid here, because all Google News is dong is driving incremental traffic to their subscribers' web sites. If I were a subscribing publisher, I would be very upset with this suit.

If AFP wins, this could have serious implications on DU, Drudge, and bloggers in general. I don't see how AFP can win this case, though...especially in light of the way Google News operates.

[BrendaStarr]

4. So does Yahoo News have permission?

Because Yahoo is the best place to get AFP news and photos.

I'm not happy saying this because I like the Google news format where you can see a lot of headlines at once.

Though it is also infected by the might right wing news blogs more than a real news place should be. There is also hope there of getting news from the up and coming non mainstream news sites that aren't right wing.

Yahoo seems to stick with mainstream and news service news. But AFP puts out some of the best news and photos.

Google should pay up and get a contract to put up the links.