Eye of the storm: Google headquarters in California

The tentacles of copyright acts never seem to set the World Wide Web free. The French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has sued the Internet search giant Google for $17.5 million in damages for copyright infringement for publishing photos, headlines and news stories for free without its permission on Google News. In a suit filed in US District Court, AFP has alleged that Google continues to violate their copyrights ?in an unabated manner? because probably they find no harm in providing newslinks to any website for the benefit of its customers. The news agency wants to ensure that Google doesn?t index its main site by including the relevant code on its servers.

Google News collects its content from over 4,500 websites and displays the headline and a blurb (sometimes an image), not the full news stories most of the time. According to the existing ethics, as a Google official claims, they are working as the link to various websites including AFP and providing direct exposure to a variety of news sources. This facilitates more page-clicks for the other websites. But one of the longest-running complaints against Google is that it is linking too deep. The headline is sometimes linked to the full stories, without permission. In some way they rob the value of AFP?s own contents. Hammered with numerous lawsuits and faring badly in them, Google is now in a soup, only ?reviewing the charge?.

AFP?s argument is not a sloppy one if one considers the economics involved in their easy-to-use, ad-free, subscription-based news service which has 600 other paid online customers. Some registration-only outlets allow weblinks to read their stories without registration initially and then offer a registration form when others try to see another story on the site. It?s a practised norm. So Google can?t be blamed so heavily for its act. A copyright is very difficult to enforce in this case.

Today?s copyright laws have hardly been adapted to protect Internet items; they have been adapted over the years. In some areas on the Internet it is as clear as mud. Now, if AFP wins its case, a new dictum will be written in the book of virtual law.

In July 2002, a Dallas-based newspaper sued a few websites to prevent such links. Once Google, too, decided to remove all the controversial links after being sued by the German Railway for the same reason. Cut-throat competition to be on the top of a particular search ? be it on music, literature, science or news ? makes websites do the same thing again and again.

News is not a holy cow. If linking a website without permission means copyright infringement, it should be made clear, and Google should be barred from doing it. If copyright violation matters in case of others, no respite should be there in the name of providing a news link.

?To link or not to link?? still remains a grey area on the Internet. An international code of conduct is the need of the hour.