Re: Web-page jacking and copyright implications?

From: Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. <rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 19:28:41 -0400

On Thu, Jun 15, 2000, Karsten M. Self <kmself[_at_]ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jun 14, 2000, Lee T. Lau <lau[_at_]wedge.com> wrote:
> >
> > "Ideally, search engines might provide a system like Google's popular
> > caching feature. That allows you to see exactly the page that Google
> > has indexed. However, it remains unclear whether Google's caching
> > feature itself is violating copyright laws by displaying copies of
> > other people's pages without permission."
> >
> > A quotation taken directly from the following article -- which, in
> > itself, is interesting.
> >
> > http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/00/05-pagejacking.html
> >
> > Can anyone expand on Google's caching feature? I'm not sure what it is.
>
> By way of example:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.wedge.com/+david+wedge+computer+law&hl=en
>
> It is a copy of website content stored in Google's 6000 node Linux
> cluster, rather than on the original website.
>
> The cache is updated periodically, so content may or may not be current.
> "Spiders", or web indexing 'bots (actually, automated browsers which
> seek out and download web content) continuously "crawl" the web, but
> may only hit a site ever few days (for a busy site) to months (for
> minor sites).
>
> Given that Google uses a scoring metric to rank site significance,
> I'd be very surprised to find that spider activity isn't also keyed
> to a similar metric -- more significant sites being scheduled for
> update more often than lesser ones.

Having had a case in this area, I would add that search engines "index" websites in surprisingly and dramatically differing ways. Many search engines consider their method of "indexing" a trade secret so accurate information is difficult to obtain. (Note that much of the publicly available information we have on indexing is actually derived from reports on search engine technology produced by universities when search engines were run on university web servers). It should be surprising to no one that some search engines may be infringing website works.

Rod

---

Rod Dixon
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
Rutgers University School of Law - Camden http://www.cyberspaces.org/
rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org

Chief Counsel
FreeBuyers Net, LLC
http://www.freebuyersnet.com/
dixon[_at_]freebuyersnet.com Received on Fri Jun 16 2000 - 23:35:12 GMT