A European Court has found quoting snippets of work to be a copyright violation. AP’s CEO Tom Curley suggested again that even “minimal” use of a news article might require a licensing agreement. Both got me thinking. What if somone files a lawsuit against the AP for its reporters violating copyright by using Google or other search engines?
Crazy? Probably. But consider. I talk to plenty of reporters — many from the Associated Press — and it’s common that they’ve used Google to research a story. For Google to operate, it indexes stories and then provides results — along with snippets/descriptions of those stories, in its search results.
Increasingly, some publishers — with the AP among those leading the charge — have suggested this is a copyright violation. Of course, they focus on their own content, from an attitude, I’d say, that they have the “good” content.
The thing is, as I explained in my Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It post, the AP and newspapers in general don’t have all the “good” content. There’s plenty of excellent content out there, much of which is used by reporters as the basis of their stories (Do Newspapers Owe Google “Fair Share” Fees For Researching Stories? gets into this more).
If it’s a violation of copyright law for Google to show snippets of a news story, then it’s a copyright violation for it to show snippets of anything. All content in the United States (and in many other countries) is protected by copyright — “quality” publishers don’t have exclusivity on this.
If the AP really believes that licensing agreements are required to show snippets and link to content, then that’s applicable to everything — not just news content. Which also means that unless the AP actively prevents its reporters from using Google, it is allowing them to knowingly benefit from a tool it believes violates copyright.
Consider this another way. Say the AP has its reporters watching pirated movies using BitTorrent. Potentially, the content owners might bring suit against the entire organization. Certainly the AP would face a huge PR blow for allowing its employees to access content in such an illegal manner.
So again — if what search engines do is a copyright violation without some licensing agreement, why does the AP allow its reporters to knowingly use these illegal tools? The same is true for any publication with executives that have been suggested they’re due some type of payment (looking at you, Wall Street Journal and you, Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten).
I don’t agree that showing summaries like this are violations, of course. I am concerned, however, that by taking things out of content and treating some material as more “equal” than other material, publishers are potentially undermining useful tools that they depend upon.
