Either Google Germany’s lawyers are not able to snuff, or they are just trapped in a really hostile environment. A regional court in Germany, today ruled in favor of a photographer and an artist who complained that search engine goliath Google Inc., is violating German copyright law by displaying thumbnail previews of their copyrighted images, according to Bloomberg reports.
In any case, this might just be one of the countless copyright lawsuits filed against Google, but its implications maybe too big in the long run for Google to just neglect it…
Google’s preview of a picture by German photographer Michael Bernhard violates his copyrights, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled, his lawyer Matthies van Eendenburg said in an interview today. Thomas Horn, who holds the copyrights on some comics that were displayed in Google search results, won a second case, court spokeswoman Sabine Westphalen said in an e-mail.
“It does not matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution,” the court said in its ruling for Bernhard. “By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created,” that may have justified displaying them without permission.
Both these lawsuits may well reflect just another case of copyright infringement filed against an Internet giant such as Google, but it might establish a “bad” precedent nonetheless and may affect the future of search results pages.
Google, of course, has no way of distinguishing whether an image in its index is copyrighted or not. And, as unusual as it may appear to not want your content to be indexed, this is not a first for Google.
Google is slammed with a similar case in 2006 where an organization called “Copiepresse,” which represents a number of newspapers in Belgium, accused the company of illegally indexing its news articles. It lost the case and was forced to remove the content.
Back then, Google announced on its blog that it intended on appealing the case saying “we believe that Google.be and Google News are entirely legal and provide great value and critical information to Internet users.”
This looks to indicate that the court expects Google’s algorithms to determine what is copyrighted and what is not. Or perhaps Google is supposed to hire a great many human researchers. One other possibility: completely discontinuing image search in Germany.
Google is allowed to appeal the rulings, however, and this should give the company time to re-examine its legal teams. It is even possible that a sort of public objection will build, since some copyright owners are bound to be afraid of experiencing huge drops in traffic.
The rulings can be appealed: The cases are 308 O 42/06 and 308 O 248/07 at the Hamburg Regional Court.
“Google is disappointed and intends to appeal the ruling to the German Supreme Court because we believe that services like Google Image Search are entirely legal… Today’s decision is very bad for Internet users in Germany, it is a major step backwards for German e-business in general, and it is bad for the thousands of websites who receive valuable traffic through Image Search and similar services.”
The disagreement highlights disputes over how copyrighted works can be used without an owner’s permission. Web sites such as Google have made it easier for consumers to share such material, prompting artists, publishers and sports leagues to step up efforts to protect their property.
Meanwhile in Germany, Gmail remains Google Mail, a town’s leaders still dislike Street View, and the federal government seems to view Chrome as “risky.”