Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

[OM] Lycos' Legality of Thumbnail Collections

Subject: [OM] Lycos' Legality of Thumbnail Collections
From: WKato@xxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 02:32:34 EST
This is off the Pentax list:
-Warren


> Ditto.com wins image copyright case
> Ruling may have sweeping implications for search engines
> By Elliot Zaret <mailto:elliot.zaret@xxxxxxxxx> MSNBC
> 
> SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17 - In a case that may have sweeping implications
> for search engines of all kinds, a federal judge in California has ruled
> that a "visual search engine" did not violate copyright laws by
> collecting thumbnail images of photographs from the Web and displaying
> them on its site. The necessity of searching the Internet outweighed any
> other factor in determining whether a copyright was violated, the judge
> said.
> 
> IN JANUARY, a California photographer sued Ditto.com
> <http://www.ditto.com>, then known as the Arriba Vista Image Searcher,
> for violating her copyright by collecting and displaying 35 of her
> copyrighted images on its site as search results. The Ditto search
> engine works by "spidering" the Web - having a computer program collect
> some two million images from any site on the Internet it can find them -
> then shrinking each image down to a thumbnail image that is displayed in
> the search result. The photographer argued that an image is an image and
> displaying her copyrighted photographs without her permission - and
> making money in the process - was effectively stealing. The U.S.
> District Court judge in Santa Ana, Calif. ruled that Ditto wasn't
> stealing the images. But the 15-page decision, handed down late
> Thursday, was somewhat more complicated - with the judge effectively
> giving a split decision on many of the relevant issues. However the
> judge said that the crucial role search engines serve for users of the
> Internet outweighs the other factors and makes Ditto's thumbnails "fair
> use" of the images. "(The photographer's) images were swept up along
> with two million others available on the Internet, as part of (Ditto's)
> efforts to provide its users with a better way to find images on the
> Internet," wrote the judge. "(Ditto's) purposes were and are inherently
> transformative, even if its realization of those purposes was at times
> imperfect. Where, as here, a new use and new technology are evolving,
> the broad transformative purpose of the use weighs more heavily than the
> inevitable flaws in its early stages of development." The judge also
> said that thumbnails themselves - though an exact replica of the
> original photos - had to be considered different from the originals
> because they served an entirely different purpose. "The character of the
> thumbnail index is not esthetic, but functional; it's purpose is not to
> be artistic, but to be comprehensive," the judge wrote. Ditto.com's
> attorney Judy Jennison, who heads the Silicon Valley Intellectual
> Property Litigation Practice of Perkins Coie, said the decision
> validates the importance of navigation tools like search engines on the
> Internet. "Generally speaking, the court has realized that the Internet
> is important to all of us, and helping people navigate the Internet is
> an important thing," said Jennison. "It's clearly the right decision for
> the Internet."
> 
> SWEEPING RAMIFICATIONS?
> 
> Rich Gray, an intellectual property attorney and founding partner of
> Outside General Counsel Silicon Valley, said the case may have sweeping
> ramifications for the industry. "It's very pro-fair use in the Internet
> context, which has implications in all kinds of things ranging from
> search engines to deep linking to framing," Gray said. For instance, the
> case seems to support the right of a music search engine to play clips
> of songs sold on MP3 sites, Gray said. And the case may come into play
> in a case filed this week by online auction giant eBay, which claimed
> that Bidder's Edge effectively stole eBay information by searching eBay
> listings with its auction search engine. However Gray warned that it's
> only one ruling in the nascent field of law and cyberspace - and until
> more cases are decided, every case will be looked at differently. "It
> wouldn't shock me if a similar case was brought in a different district
> court and a different result happened," Gray said. "This could have gone
> either way."
> 
> 
> Farah
> 
> Lycos Customer Service    

< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz