The WSJ Online considers "Google Search: 'Copyright'." Topic para:

There's one big problem. The firm's practice of downloading and reproducing books, articles, photographs and other creative materials without approval of the copyright owners is legally ambiguous. And in our time, what's legally ambiguous gets sued. What's new here is that, on an unprecedented scale, Google pits the rights of intellectual property owners against the Web's ability to "democratize" information for everyone.

Continue reading WSJ on Google & Copyright . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 7:39 AM | Search Engines

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I write again from Lake Tahoe (it's snowing). This time motivated by the panel on massive server farms and the discussion of distributed computing. Folks have been talking about and predicting distributed computing for years, about the applications and processing power moving off the desktop and on to the Net. And more and more of the associated architectural problems--storage, memory, if not yet switching, parallel programming, and network capacity--are being addressed.

Continue reading Open Source and Distributed Computing . . .

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:32 PM | Infrastructure , Search Engines , Software

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Declan McCullagh writes about Copyright tussles for Google.

As Google becomes more deeply interested in books and video, and expands its search domain beyond Web pages, it has found itself increasingly at odds with established copyright industries including book publishers, journalists, and professional photographers. In addition, its keyword advertising has antagonized some trademark holders, though Google did prevail against Geico in a dispute two years ago.

posted by James DeLong @ 2:58 PM | Search Engines

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Did you know that Google has "a trademark policy, which prevents bids on other people's registered trademarks, and we do not allow people to advertise with AdWords for counterfeit products."

The basic issue is whether a competitor can buy a trademarked term as a keyword -- so that someone looking for "Ford" is taken to the General Motors website, for example. Trademark owners, being a touchy lot, think the practice clicks on "infringement," so Google has good reason to avoid the problem.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:52 AM | Search Engines

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A search for the phrase "sup with the devil" produced a slew of quotation sources, and one paid link -- by the used book service allibris to a 1983 paperback Harlequin romance of that title. What does Google charge for such links, anyway? How is it economical to buy a link for one old low-price book? Long-tail experts, where are you?

posted by James DeLong @ 2:33 PM | Search Engines

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Technology & Marketing Law Blog has a follow-up on the KinderStart case. This one quotes/links to Google's motion to dismiss.

Eric Goldman, who does TMLB, also has an interesting paper in draft on Search Engine Bias and the Demise of Search Engine Utopianism. The Abstract:

Due to search engines’ automated operations, people often assume that search engines display search results neutrally and without bias. However, this perception is mistaken. Like any other media company, search engines affirmatively control their users’ experiences, which has the consequence of skewing search results (a phenomenon called “search engine bias”). Some commentators believe that search engine bias is a defect requiring legislative correction. Instead, this Essay argues that search engine bias is the beneficial consequence of search engines optimizing content for their users. The Essay further argues that the most problematic aspect of search engine bias, the “winner-take-all” effect caused by top placement in search results, will be mooted by emerging personalized search technology.

posted by James DeLong @ 3:13 PM | Search Engines

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Solveig quoted David Schmidz on scarcity and property rights, on the Technology Liberation Front, and a commenter noted: "So the key question is, then: are ideas scarce? I would argue that they are not, in fact, that it is impossible for them to be scarce."

I think this misses two important dimensions of the issue. First, the time and energy of innovators is most certainly a scarce resource. Second, it is vitrually impossible to tell in advance who is going to be an effective innovator and who is not, so rewarding for success is a sensible policy.

posted by James DeLong @ 7:00 AM | Search Engines

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Parker v. Google. Google maintains USENET, a collection of online bulletin boards. It also, as you may have heard, operates a search engine.

Parker posted part of his copyrighted book on USENET, then sued Google for copyright violations and numerous other offenses for (a) archiving USENET files; and (b) linking to these files in response to search requests.

Held: Get outa here. For more learned analysis, see C|Net News.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:43 AM | Search Engines

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On Friday, February 24 -- tomorrow! -- Hal Varian and I will be engaging in a lunch-time public discussion of Google's controversial Book Search project. The event will be in Washington DC, it starts at 11:45am and runs until 2pm, and it is being hosted by Bob Hahn and the American Enterprise Institute. Information and registration details are here.

I am optimistic that it will be a productive dialogue. For those of you who do not know him, Hal Varian is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and he has long been one of the leading thinkers in information economics. His popular press business strategy book, Information Rules, was a huge success and is a great read. More personally, back when I was in college, Hal was one of the economists whose work inspired me to do what I now do for a living.

It should be a fun event. If you are interested in the Google copyright controversy and have the time, please join us.

posted by Doug Lichtman @ 10:02 AM | Search Engines

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For all of those people who claim Google is going to take over the world, I have a bit of "proof" for you.

Continue reading Google in the Kitchen . . .

posted by Amy Smorodin @ 10:42 AM | Search Engines

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