By arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, March 29, 2005The French news agency, agence-France Press (aFP) has launched a lawsuit against Google Inc. The suit, filed last week in a U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. is seeking $17.5 million in damages against the search engine company.
aFP sells news stories and photographs to subscribers and claims that its copyrights are being infringed because Google is reproducing the company’s property from aFP subscribers’ Web sites. The subscribers themselves are unlikely to complain; clicking on a news item by one of Google’s 4,500 news sources (of which Canada Free Press is one), links the user back to the Web site of the news source. This increases the traffic to the source’s Web site, which of course is beneficial to that site.
Google Inc. is now attempting to remove all postings of agence-France Presse material from its site, although aFP spokesmen say that even if this is done, the lawsuit will continue.
It is difficult to understand exactly what damage is being done to aFP. What Google Inc. is doing is not causing media customers of aFP to stop buying news and photographs from the news agency. Their subscribers are still subscribing and what Google is doing is benefiting aFP’s customers. It seems that the basis of the lawsuit is just the abstract notion of copyright without any real damages to justify the action. In order to successfully defend the action, Google Inc. must establish that their use of the material is a "fair" use of copyright material.
It would be a sad day for those who look to the Internet for news if aFP is successful in limiting what Google can display. Google News provides excellent news articles from its thousands of newspapers, radio and television stations. Stories are posted quickly, change quickly, and the site is not only an excellent research tool, but can provide multiple sources for news stories. With a click of the mouse, the user can access tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of sources (as in the Terri Schiavo case) on a topic that is currently in the news.
aFP’s lawsuit, if successful, is bound to have a major impact on how news is delivered on the Internet.