For those trying to keep up with Google's copyright battles:
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Google Cache Ruled Fair Use
A district court in Nevada has ruled that the Google Cache is a fair use.
Blake Field, an author and attorney, brought the copyright infringement
lawsuit against Google after the search engine automatically copied and
cached a story he posted on his website. The district court found that Mr.
Field לattempted to manufacture a claim for copyright infringement against
Google in hopes of making money from Googleםs standard [caching] practice.מ
Google responded that its Google Cache feature, which allows Google users to
link to an archival copy of websites indexed by Google, does not violate
copyright law.
The court granted summary judgment in favor of Google on four independent
bases:
Serving a webpage from the Google Cache does not constitute direct
infringement, because it results from automated, non-volitional activity by
Google servers (Field did not allege infringement on the basis of the making
of the initial copy by the Googlebot);
Field's conduct (failure to set a "no archive" metatag; posting "allow all"
robot.txt header) indicated that he impliedly licensed search engines to
archive his web page;
The Google Cache is a fair use; and
The Google Cache qualifies for the DMCA's 512(b) caching "safe harbor" for
online service providers.
The decision is replete with interesting findings that could have important
consequences for the search engine industry, the Internet Archive, the
Google Library Project lawsuit, RSS republishing, and a host of other online
activities.
From: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php
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