28 September 2006 | Author: Alastair Wright

Google clarifies its approach to content and copyright following Belgian court case

The recent Google.be versus Copiepresse copyright case, as covered here on September the 21st, has led to some public statements from Google this week regarding the case itself and their approach to content (including copyright).

On Monday 25th Rachel Whetstone, Google's European Director of Communications and Public Affairs, posted a statement on Google Blog explaining their side of the case (presumably because they had neglected to do so in court).

Having acknowledged that Google could not comment on the judgment itself due to the fact that their appeal is to be heard on 24th November, Whetstone observed that "this case raises important and complex issues. It goes to the heart of how search engines work".

She pointed out the benefits of being indexed in Google News to the very organisations that had brought about and won the court case, and went on to state that they have always had the option to opt out by using the robots.txt standard or by simply asking not to be included.

On Tuesday 26th David Eun, VP, Content Partnerships, followed Whetstone's statement with one of his own, a more generic insight into Google's approach towards copyright entitled "Our Approach to Content".

In this he states "Our aim [is] to help organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful... Because we don't own this content, over the years we've come up with three primary principles to ensure that we respect content owners and protect their rights."

These primary principles were detailed as:

• We respect copyright:

Interestingly, Mr Eun pointed out that Google has "agreed to pay the Associated Press (AP) for the right to make new use of its news content - use that go [sic] beyond the limited use permitted by copyright laws. We also license content from third parties for several other Google services such as Google Earth, Google Finance and Google Maps."

As discussed last week, bigmouthmedia felt that this type of agreement was actually what was sought by Copiepresse though they chose to force the issue through the courts rather than approach Google directly for a working partnership; something that is surely lost to them for the foreseeable future as a result.

• We let owners choose whether we index their content in our products:

"It's simple: we always allow content owners to opt out - quickly and easily. Of course, some people argue that we should be asking content owners to opt in, not requiring them to opt out. Google aims to provide comprehensive search results. This would be impossible in a world where permission simply to index (which is entirely legal) was necessary."

Bigmouthmedia agrees with Eun's take on this point to a certain extent. When, say, Google sticks to using only headlines, snippets and image thumbnails, as covered by "fair use". When it comes to cached pages we agree with SearchEngineWatch's Founder and editor-in-chief, Danny Sullivan, who states in his blog:

"In the case of cached pages, many including myself would argue that Google goes beyond fair use. Cached pages are an example of where content can be viewed without clicking through to the original site, and the opt-out approach for that doesn't feel appropriate at all."

• We try to bring benefit back to content owners by partnering with them:

Here Eun observes that "by enabling people to discover information, Google drives web traffic, customer queries, advertising revenues and sales to our partners, both online and offline." As search marketers, Bigmouthmedia is happy to agree 100% on this point!

The debate rumbles on and November 24th approaches fast.

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