March 20, 2005, 11.55pm • 25 comments » • 822 Views

AFP suing Google News over copyright

It had to happen sooner or later. The first news organisation to sue Google News is Agence France Presse.

“The French news service is seeking damages of at least $17.5 million and an order barring Google News from displaying AFP photographs, news headlines or story leads, according to the suit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” says Reuters.

One can understand AFP’s concern. Free aggregation of individual newspapers’ material by Google News threatens to remove the control of the model by which the wire makes its money, by selling content to those individual titles.

If Google contests the case, it will certainly be an interesting one to follow. Google would be likely to claim that it is merely a point of aggregation for, a gateway to, all those AFP stories hosted elsewhere. It’s likely to centre on whether the amount of material republished by Google (full headlines, excerpts of stories or standfirsts, and small photos unable to be reproduced in any decent quality) consitutes fair use or not.

Reuters adds: “In 2002, a federal appeals court ruled that Web sites may reproduce and post “thumbnail” or down-sized versions of copyrighted photographs. But the court said displaying full-sized copies of photographs is a copyright violation.”

Will the AFP suit give way to more suits against Google?

(via CyberJournalist.net - AFP sues over Google News” href=”http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002218.php”>CyberJournalist.net)