Google’s VP for Content Partnerships, David Eun, posted a long entry to the Official Google blog explaining the company’s approach to content, and its position that Google helps content creators while respecting their rights.
Google’s’ Eun did not specifically mention the Belgian case, but it is hard to imagine a scenario where his post could not have been motivated by events in the Court of First Instance in Brussels. Google has to wait until November to get a full hearing on its alleged copyright infringement of newspapers managed by Belgian firm Copiepresse.
Two consecutive days of blog posts addressing the issues at hand represent a change for Google. Even the controversy over the company’s entry into China, and the required obedience of Chinese censorship laws, did not prompt two straight days of commentary from highly placed Googlers.
Accusations of copyright infringement are much different than filtering “Falun Gong” queries in Beijing though. The charges go straight to the heart of Google’s business, and its stated corporate goal of organizing all the world’s information.
Eun listed Google News and Google Book Search as examples of how Google respects the copyrights of content creators. Those sites only show small excerpts from the source material. Google News links through to the original article, while Book Search only makes the full text of public domain works available.
Both of those examples have now been central to lawsuits against Google. Groups of authors and publishers have sued Google over Book Search. Google claimed its use of excerpts of books is no different than that of newspapers using snippets of an in-copyright book’s text in a published review.
Google’s position on asking copyright holders to opt-out rather than opt-in does not look like it’s going to change, according to Eun:
Of course, some people argue that we should be asking content owners to opt in, not requiring them to opt out. Google aims to provide comprehensive search results. This would be impossible in a world where permission simply to index (which is entirely legal) was necessary. But we also believe that opt-out rather than opt-in benefits not just Google users, but also content owners. If content isn’t indexed it can’t be searched. And if it can’t be searched, how can it be found?
That’s the issue lawsuits against Google do not address. If websites and content creators benefit from traffic from Google, and those destinations do not have licensing agreements with specific partners for displaying their content in electronic form, won’t the content providers be harmed by omission from search engines?
Maybe the lawyers will explain that in November.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.