Comments on: Beer, Chocolate, and Google http://madisonian.net/2007/02/14/beer-chocolate-and-google/ a blog about law, tech, culture, and related things Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:59:42 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: jhn http://madisonian.net/2007/02/14/beer-chocolate-and-google/comment-page-1/#comment-168192 jhn Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:37:39 +0000 http://madisonian.net/archives/2007/02/14/beer-chocolate-and-google/#comment-168192 Let me be a devil's advocate. I personally think that what Google does should be fine. Google News doesn't just link, it links and excerpts. And it does this for financial gain. I don't think that linking by itself, or linking coupled with an original, human-written summary of what is on the other side of the link, would be bothersome to most newspapers. But the fact is that Google uses snippets from the original articles for their service, and they do this for each article they link to, often every article on a particular site. It is this use of their material, which is very extensive, that probably does go beyond fair use. (Under American law.) Let me be a devil’s advocate. I personally think that what Google does should be fine.

Google News doesn’t just link, it links and excerpts. And it does this for financial gain. I don’t think that linking by itself, or linking coupled with an original, human-written summary of what is on the other side of the link, would be bothersome to most newspapers. But the fact is that Google uses snippets from the original articles for their service, and they do this for each article they link to, often every article on a particular site. It is this use of their material, which is very extensive, that probably does go beyond fair use. (Under American law.)

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