|
    
    
| |
Copyright
Infringement
At one time search engines only searched the text
of web-pages. As search engines enhance from searching the text of a web page
to searching meta tags, graphics and sounds of web pages, legal disputes
develop. Among these disputes are
copyright infringement claims.
Copyright holders allege that search engines are copying, transmitting,
making a public display or making a derivative work without permission in
violation of the Copyright Act
including the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
Specifically, copyright holders argue that:
-
When
search engines display thumbnails of their copyrighted images, the search
engines have created a thumbnail using a copied image and stored at least
the thumbnail, and maybe the full image, in its database, without
permission.
-
When search engines copy a portion of a websites
text and make the copy readily viewable from the search engines web-page, a
copy has been made without permission of the copyright holder.
-
When
search engines provide a preview of several images from several websites
with one search, it allows searchers to copy several copy-written images
from the one website- the search engines’ websites.
In response to these issues, some search engine
providers have taken precautions such as:
-
Provide notices indicating
that images cannot be used without obtaining copyright permission from the
copyright holder.
-
Provide information on how
to use a robots.txt file or
Meta tags to stop their engine from indexing the
site or a particular page on the site.
-
Link directly to the
files, instead of linking to the page that "contains" the file.
-
Allowing website owners to
opt-out of having there information retrieved through the search engines
website.
REFERENCES:
|
