1. Advertising
    y u no do it?

    Advertising (learn more)

    Advertise virtually anything here, with CPM banner ads, CPM email ads and CPC contextual links. You can target relevant areas of the site and show ads based on geographical location of the user if you wish.

    Starts at just $1 per CPM or $0.10 per CPC.

Google is DONE

Discussion in 'Google' started by SEOGuru, Jun 2, 2004.

  1. #1
    I've recently heard some people talk about how Google might be reading Javascript in the future. Let me just take a moment to put this into perspective.

    Even if Google was able to understand Javascript, executing the scripts could bring their servers to a halt. It is so easy to create a script that would send their bot into an endless cycle and even have it where only a robot would execute it. Anyone who knows about JavaScript will know that this would open up thousands of possiblities to give Google headaches.

    Ultimately, the largest issue that Google faces is not javascript. It is CSS. With the entire purpose of CSS being to separate design and content, you can now hide virtually anything in an external style sheet. Though you can control the visibility and z-indexing externally, you can also control how your code is displayed. For instance, you can use absolute positioning to place all of the keyword-rich text at the top of your code, only to have it display at the bottom of your page.

    Do you think Google will ever start indexing CSS files? Not only would they have to drudge through hundreds of lines of code with no real content, but they would need to be able to "APPLY" those styles to the original page without the use of a browser.

    Now let’s go a step further. Let us just imagine that they did in fact start indexing external CSS files AND they were able to then apply those styles AND be able to recognize display differences.... you could still mask the CSS files by using server side scripts that encrypt the name and location.

    And even IF they found a way around that (which is virtually impossible and certainly not financially feasible) they would be walking a VERY tight line.

    I think most people are forgetting that Google is going PUBLIC. As a public company that can't get away with the crap that they have been pulling for the last few years. Google can not FORCE the development community to program a certain way, nor can they penalize you for doing such. It is called Business Interference and they would get nailed by the FTC so fast they wouldn't know what hit them. They can not legally tell you that the content in your code MUST be in the same order in which it is displayed in the browser. I can think of a hundred legitimate reasons why a web developer would code their pages one way over another. Maybe it is for ease of editing. Maybe they disabled content that they plan on using again later.

    Google legally CAN NOT tell a company that all code on a page MUST be visible to the user. Is javascript viewable? Comment tags? Table tags? Are hidden layers visible even though they can be triggered by a function?

    At some point who makes the decision of what you can and can not have in your code to effect how successful your business is in a search engine? As you can see, the entire concept of Google rewarding or penalizing people based on the code within their site is VERY risky. Ever heard of a class action lawsuit? Makes you wonder doesn't it.

    And we are not even talking about how they handle blacklisting (banning) sites for breaking rules that you may not even know you broke. I've never personally had a site banned but I have also never heard of people saying that they got a note from Google explaining to them why they were banned and exactly what they did. Sorry, you can no longer do that as a public company.

    While we are at it, let me throw something else out there. At what point did it become legal for Google to literally STEAL copy written information from sites all over the world. Think about it. Their ENTIRE business is based on content that isn't theirs. They have indexed billions of pages, stripped tile tags, meta tags, and links. Heck, they even make copies of your entire code for their cache. All WITHOUT permission.

    The search results are a free service though, right? So they aren't making money off of it. Yeah right. They are making millions of dollars with Adwords (90% of their revenue) based on search listings that they have taken without permission. Exactly what is Google without search results? NOTHING. They are going to raise billions of dollars on the public market for something they don't even own.

    Google's response is, "Well, if you don't want us to index you, then use the 'robots' meta tag."

    Sorry, but that doesn't hold up. Does that mean that unless I place a sign on my front door saying "PLEASE DON'T STEAL FROM ME" I am giving permission for anyone to break into my house?

    It is not for you to tell each and every search engine NOT to steal your code, but rather it is their responsibility to gain permission. This is the same thing that happened with email before federal law required companies to OPT-IN their list members. It used to be that unless you said "don't put me on a list" you would be sent email marketing letters from whoever can get your address.

    All search engines face this dilemma however no one has been big enough to fight them.

    If I were Google, I would be VERY careful. And to the potential investors, how can you EVER put faith in a company whose entire business hinges on such a thin thread.

    Final thought: Think about this. Why is it that Google is announcing its IPO before it has to submit its quarterly results that would state among other things a loss of Yahoo as the largest provider for their search listings, as well as a pending infringement of Overture's patent? They have seen drastically decreasing growth rates in the last few months but instead decide to publish their 2003-2004 growth rates. People are getting caught up in the hype of a revenue trend that can go no where but down.

    They WILL raise a ton of money in their IPO and by that fact alone, they will be around for awhile. However, it is only a matter of time before they fade into nonexistence. Until that day comes, being an SEO Expert, I will continue to use every legal method I know to make many more millions off of them.
     
    SEOGuru, Jun 2, 2004 IP
  2. stripersonline

    stripersonline Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    1
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    123
    #2
    I'm pretty new around here, but unless I missed a memo or two, Google does not now nor ever has attempted to tell/make/force anyone to do anything - ever :) They offer suggestions. Failure to follow those suggestions is not a crime, it just means you many not be satisfied with where your page rank is. Google, no matter how you slice it, is still just a service - people use it. People can use other similar services that have other sets of suggestions. The fact that it's publicly traded means nothing. They can, as a service company, make any rules or suggestions they want. If they decided tomorrow everyone had to give them $50 or be de-listed, they could do that, too. If they demanded every site they listed had to have a link to Google, they could do that. It would be SE suicide, but it would be perfectly legal :)
     
    stripersonline, Jun 2, 2004 IP
  3. Owlcroft

    Owlcroft Peon

    Messages:
    645
    Likes Received:
    34
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    A company, publicly or privately held, can do mostly what it wants. It cannot discriminate based on some set-in-text factors, such as race, religion, nationality, and The Usual Suspects, but otherwise it can largely do whatever seems economic.

    Having to do things in a certain way to have Google respond in a certain way is scarcely "forcing" anyone to do anything. If I price a dozen eggs at $5, I am not "forcing" you to spend $5 for a dozen eggs: buy elsewhere, or don't buy at all--your choice.

    The intellectual-property rights involved in Google caching and analyzing pages are closer to a real issue, but the "fair use" doctrine probably would prevail--it is not as if Google is either making a profit from "re-publishing" the cached pages or, by caching them, is in any non-comic way way interfering with the owner's right and ability to use them for profit.

    In short, nothing will change, and arguably nothing should change, as a consequence of Google going public.

    It is not as if there is not a lot, an awful lot, wrong with the way Google does things, and the influence of that way on the internet as a whole. Clearly, the tail is wagging the dog. But that will only change by marketplace factors--which is to say, someone else coming along and doing a better job. But, as with any capital-intensive industry, such as, for example, automobile manufacturing or newspaper publishing, it's not enough to have a significantly better idea, you need a lot of moolah to risk, which is why automobiles and newspapers, among many other things, continue to suck toxic waste. (Do de name "DeLorean" ring a bell?)

    Yahoo and M$ have, or had, realistic chances to challenge Google, and help whip them into shape. Snerk, snortle. If it took brains to breathe, the world's overpopulation problem would disappear in about a minute flat.
     
    Owlcroft, Jun 2, 2004 IP
  4. SEOGuru

    SEOGuru Peon

    Messages:
    147
    Likes Received:
    26
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    Actually, it DOES matter. There are two sides to Google. One is the side that the visitors use. THAT is the service. You search for a topic and up pops results. The other part of Google is optimizing for those results, which is NOT a service. They have 100% control over the rankings, don't give any rules to go by and expect the world to know.

    Here is the crux of it. If no one was using Google, it wouldn't matter. Unfortunately, our laws are written so that if a company gains so much power in an industry to a point where they can affect the success of other businesses, that company is on a level that has different guidelines. I'll give you one example. Let us say that a company was able to secure many top spots in many prime keywords. Let us also say that this company was making the majority of their income via the search engines (Google being one of the largest). Google would have the power to (at will) change their ranking algorithm sending that company plummeting. Heck, right now they can ban them for NO REASON and the company could do nothing about it. They would have no recourse. What if that company was publicly traded and executives at Google shorted their stock right before they made them worthless?

    There are different rules for companies such as Google who have such power. Google has every right to try to make their results more relevant. They have every right to try to eliminate spam sites, link farms and such. However that begs the question... What is relevant? If there are two legitimate sites, what makes one more relevant than the other? Certainly Google knows as they are the ones that rank them. However, by not disclosing such criteria, they can forever be held unaccountable. Such a situation could give an unfair advantage to one company over another. That is Business Interference and companies have lost such court cases doing far less than what Google is doing.

    By favoring one site over another based on their own criteria, they ARE in fact indirectly FORCING people to code their site a certain way. They are saying, “Your business will not succeed online if you program your site this way.” What’s more, “We aren’t going to tell how you SHOULD program your site in order to succeed.”

    Many companies including Microsoft have been nailed using similar tactics. To Google it is just magic dust. You put up a site and somehow, some way you are just ranked (or not ranked). It has been the SEO community that has had to try and figure out the optimization part of it.

    Yes, they can charge $50 to be listed and actually that would be the smartest thing they would have done to date, but their rules must be universal. How do you know if you get an added boost if you just happen to have a huge Ad Word budget? People speculate but ultimately you don’t know…. UNLESS you are public and MUST answer to the SEC.

    I'm not just Google bashing either. Yahoo has a similar problem. In fact Yahoo's might even be worse because they have actually come right out and contradicted themselves. They have said that you can PAY to be listed and indexed and by doing so you can also pay to get clicks. These aren't sponsored listings like Overture, but the "free" listings. They even say that this new service will help you move up though they don't guarantee any placement. Then elsewhere they say that their search rankings are uninfluenced which is obviously B.S. If Yahoo is getting money per click from those sites how could they not give those sites an added bump. It is a conflict of interest.

    Believe me, these issues of both companies will be decided in court. It may take years but eventually it will be decided. This is actually already a hot topic that many lawyers are looking at. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, it is probably the lawyers that will make the most.
     
    SEOGuru, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  5. payoutwindow

    payoutwindow Peon

    Messages:
    788
    Likes Received:
    8
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #5
    I will just respond to this one statement .... firstly here's a small extract from the google site .. Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the web and caches these as a back-up in case the original page is unavailable. If you click on the "Cached" link, you will see the web page as it looked when we indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether this page is a relevant match for your query.

    The "Cached" link will be missing for sites that have not been indexed, as well as for sites whose owners have requested we not cache their content.


    There is nothing wrong with me taking pictures of your house is there now?? ... and if u put up a sign that I can't do it then i won't ... that simple. Also note how they used the word back-up ... very smart indeed.

    Hate them or like them ... google is here to stay and right now they are the industry leader.
     
    payoutwindow, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  6. stripersonline

    stripersonline Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    38
    Likes Received:
    1
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    123
    #6
    That would be stock fraud and would be bad for Google ;)
     
    stripersonline, Jun 3, 2004 IP
    SEOGuru likes this.
  7. Tomas

    Tomas Peon

    Messages:
    8
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #7
    you can complain all you like about Google influencing the fate of companies by dropping them from their listings but there are two things to consider:

    firstly, you don't get banned from google unless you blatantly misuse tricks to get your ranking up.

    Secondly, if your company depends on free search engine listings for it's income, i would say that's a very shaky business model, and you can't blame google for dropping you from it's listings.

    instead of blaming the search engines, blame the SEO companies that are acting as if they can garantee you great rankings, when thruthfully, they can't deliver on that promise.
     
    Tomas, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  8. Dirkjan

    Dirkjan The Dutch SEO Guy

    Messages:
    528
    Likes Received:
    21
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    138
    #8
    I didnt read the whole thing but parts of it and it amazes me that people take these things so serious. Most of us are 'just webmasters' that noticed that Google use a system and that by editing the site to this system makes you rank higher. What is wrong with that css is not indexed? whats wrong with the fact that they want to learn javascript? Let them do it however they want and maybe in the future most of the sites that are currently indexed are not properly indexed anymore but who cares? Internet has millions of sites, and Google probably only shows 0,01% of them or something so who cares which they are as long as the users are happy with the results?

    Another thing, I dont think you can compare your website with your home. As long as you dont open your website (get crosslinks, title and stuff) you wont get into Google. But as soon as everybody can visit you through multiple crosslinks than what is the problem that Google can see you too? My house however has no 'deeplinks' or 'open doors' so I dont expect people there. A website is more like a billboards next to the highway. Can you forbid someone filming there that he sees your billboard? or even broadcast it on TV?
     
    Dirkjan, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  9. disgust

    disgust Guest

    Messages:
    2,417
    Likes Received:
    133
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #9
    have there ever been any court cases with people objecting to the fact that the cached pages are an "opt in" and not an "opt out"?

    honestly that seems like the only thing that's really in iffy ground as far as google goes in the eyes of the law.

    also, though: who says it needs to execute the javascript to follow links? you can browse through the code and follow possible links without understanding the javascript at all; just search for links in the plain text, it's not hard.
     
    disgust, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  10. payoutwindow

    payoutwindow Peon

    Messages:
    788
    Likes Received:
    8
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #10
    I think a court case would be a waist of time ... they could easily use the fair use clause to avoid copyright infridgement .. see link
    http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.htm

    one of the points in the fair use clause is (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. and in most of the cases the effect is positive

    Then there always the DMCA as secondary cover. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), sites cannot be held liable for copyright infringement provided they promptly take down content flagged by a copyright holder.

    And from what I have read most sites usually comply ... including google.
     
    payoutwindow, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  11. anthonycea

    anthonycea Banned

    Messages:
    13,378
    Likes Received:
    342
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #11
    Damm, SEOGURU you are getting close to a Supreme Court case here, nothing will change until lawsuits or the law of the land is changed in regard to storage of data in search engines and gathering of those pages, photos, music, video. But you are right, copyright law will force changes. The problem is everyone needs exposure to make money, so why keep material out of the database unless it is a vertical database that you sell exclusively to your own clients?

    You make great points and it is great to have someone with a brilliant mind like you as a member here at Digital Point.

    You are right about copyright laws, I can record a movie for personal use, but if I show it in my bar for commercial gain, I can be charged with a crime for copyright violations.

    But unless webmasters as a group get lawyers together to file a class action lawsuit nothing will change.

    Most webmasters want their sites to be spidered so why would the take action in that direction.

    The action in the search business down the road will be in vertical data sources that search engines can not crawl at all.

    These vertical sources of data will licence search engines to SELL access to these data bases.

    The search engines will not always be a free source of information, current data available from search indexes is a tiny fraction of the total amount of information on databases worldwide.

    If you ask most scholars they will tell you that if you depend on the search engines for sources of research that you will not even scratch the surface of what you need to find to learn anything anyway.

    So to think that all knowledge is available from search engines is a mistake and the experts will tell you that.

    I know a lot of what I said is off topic to your original post, but I just wanted to say I will study what you said, I just do not think I am smart enough to understand all of it.
     
    anthonycea, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  12. disgust

    disgust Guest

    Messages:
    2,417
    Likes Received:
    133
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #12
    yeah, that's the interesting thing: what they're doing probably ISN'T legal (storing the cached pages and letting others see them), but no one bothers to object to it because it's so easy to get the site out of the cache if you want to.

    still, people have tried to talk people to court over things as trivial as LINKING to their site, so it seems like someone would've challenged this by now..
     
    disgust, Jun 3, 2004 IP
    SEOGuru likes this.
  13. SEOGuru

    SEOGuru Peon

    Messages:
    147
    Likes Received:
    26
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #13
    Well, this whole thing is an interesting argument.

    I guess the point I was trying to make is that win or lose there is enough for a legitimate case to be made against them. And if you had enough resources and good lawyers you could actually give them a run for their money.

    It really doesn't affect me too much as I have diversified the revenue streams of my online corporations, BUT, if you remember the Florida update, just that little tweak turned the whole SEO world upside-down. It made headline news across the country as businesses that had been on top of Google for years and relied on the traffic for their success were suddenly gone.

    As I said before, when a company reaches a point where they are SO powerful in an industry that they can affect other companies the SEC takes great care to make sure that power is not abused. All it would take is someone with enough money to take them to court claiming business interference. Even if they lost, they could force Google to disclose its ranking criteria to everyone.

    It isn't a matter of IF this legal battle will happen; it is a matter of WHEN.

    Really, this whole legal part of my post was just a side note. :) Actually, I was originally talking about how some people think that Google reading JavaScript was going to be a huge blow to the SEO community. People who have done blatantly "sneaky" things with Javascript may not be able to anymore but really it will have little impact.

    It is CSS that Google needs to worry about. That is the easiest and even most secure way to optimize code independent of display. The white papers that Page and Brin did at Stanford indirectly confirm this. They never anticipated where technology would be years later. They recognized that PageRank could be manufactured but concluded that it would not be financially viable for someone to take the time. Little did they know.

    I know for fact ;) that for under $100,000 you can purchase over 10,000 domains, all registered behind a proxy company, hosted on 100 different co-lo servers in 6 different countries with different IP ranges, managed through a central database and analytics engine that uses Web Services to push the data out to all of the other websites. A hierarchy database with millions of keywords is broken into theme levels, topic levels, then keyword levels including misspellings of the keywords, each with its own ID. Plus, every page on every website is dynamically generated including layout, color scheme, naming conventions, sitemaps, title tags, meta tags, and randomized semantically perfect content and keyword specific links, and with the URL's rewritten using MOD or ISAPI rewrite. Each page is tracked to see when it is indexed and dynamically the non-indexed pages move up in priority in the sitemaps. And all of these domains, servers, and technology is owned by over a dozen different Nevada corporations of which your name doesn't even show up on the Articles of Incorporation by use of a designated agent. Holding companies own those.

    Where is the ROI? To make a profit, you only need to make less than 3 cents on each website per day. Do you know how easy it is to make 3 pennies? If you make 6 cents you've more than doubled your money, at which time you own 30,000 domains. Because the cost of the servers and database is a fixed cost you wouldn't even need to expand until you were somewhere around 300,000 domains. Unless you build in load balanced Itanium servers that can provide the power of a mainframe and can manage thousands of terabytes of data. It is exponential growth on a system that is 98% automated. Less than 6 employees.

    Now what if you made only $1 per day per domain. It is amazing how many people try to make their fortune with a single website when all you have to do is automate 10,000+ websites that only make a few cents per day.

    You all know that there are hundreds of automated ways of making money from a website. There are centralized advertising systems, niche stores to be created using various APIs, and traffic to be generated and delivered to the highest bidder (What Yahoo and Google are doing themselves). The problem with Google is that they never figured out a way to make money from the FREE listings. Yet, it is those FREE listings that they have invested the most time and money into. How ironic.

    I could go into greater detail but I can't give away ALL of the secrets because it obviously isn't good business sense to tell everyone else how to do it.

    It actually is funny how many "SEO EXPERTS" sell their services. If they really WERE experts and really did know about SEO, they wouldn't tell anyone else becuase there is 1000 times more money to be made by keeping it a secret and using the techniques yourself.

    Believe me, Larry and Brin never anticipated that their little "project" would get so big and that there is a TON of money to be made in search, thereby making it financially viable. To be honest, I hope they stay around so that true SEO experts can continue to use them as a free vehicle to generate millions of dollars.
     
    SEOGuru, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  14. googler

    googler Peon

    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #14
    Adsence? that is one way to make money off of free listings?

    The databse websites that you were speaking of. To me this is a great idea and why not exploit easy ways of making money? As long as you are making money you are providing a service that people want. oh by the way, does anybody want to buy 10,000 domains, and websites for 100,000 dollars? guaranteed profits!
     
    googler, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  15. anthonycea

    anthonycea Banned

    Messages:
    13,378
    Likes Received:
    342
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #15
    SEO GURU is quoted as follows "As I said before, when a company reaches a point where they are SO powerful in an industry that they can affect other companies the SEC takes great care to make sure that power is not abused. All it would take is someone with enough money to take them to court claiming business interference. Even if they lost, they could force Google to disclose its ranking criteria to everyone."

    What you are saying in the above statement is happening right now.

    http://www.searchwars.squarespace.com/display/ShowPage?moduleId=18914

    Google is in court in regard to traffic redirection of trademarks, this also has a lot to do with the "so called FLORIDA update" shaking up of results to redirect traffic to Google Advertising partners.

    In these proceedings in court they will have to review the ALGO's, see the articles on all of these pending lawsuits in the above link.
     
    anthonycea, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  16. SEOGuru

    SEOGuru Peon

    Messages:
    147
    Likes Received:
    26
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #16

    Well done Anthonycea! Nice research. I had an idea that it might already be happening but I didn't know which cases. Thanks for the info.
     
    SEOGuru, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  17. Owlcroft

    Owlcroft Peon

    Messages:
    645
    Likes Received:
    34
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #17
    Speaking as a nonlawyer but one who has been close to the legal profession for two decades, I think that there is a misunderstanding here. The observation that when a company reaches a point where they are SO powerful in an industry that they can affect other companies the SEC takes great care to make sure that power is not abused applies when a company's market share of their industry allows them to affect other companies in their industry. Were there evidence that Google was using its current dominant position in the SE industry to hamstring, say, Yahoo, that would be a plausibly actionable matter.

    But when a company, no matter how dominant in its industry, is pursuing its business in a colorably reasonable manner, the effects of that pursuit on others outside that industry is not, save rather extraordinary (and gross) activities, going to be a subject for judicial consideration.

    A quick look at the link mentioned earlier shows what looks to me like the rough equivalent of a small-time Hollywood gossip column, or perhaps the Daily Enquirer: "Woman becomes human chicken! Jesus found living in mobile home! Google doomed!"

    Also: when a company is in litigation and matters considered "trade secrets" are involved, the courts will go to great lengths to protect the privacy of those secrets. A court can, for instance, retain a "special master"--an neutral expert in a given field--who will examine and report privately to the court on the matters at issue, so that they are not disclosed to the public.

    There are many things wrong with how Google does what it does, and the strong influence their activity has on the design and success of web sites--never forget, please, that a very large fraction of web sites are noncommercial efforts of dedicated amateurs who risk having those efforts go largely for naught if some substantially inferior other sites happen to, or are designed to, be so put together that they are pleasing to searchbots, however little interest they may have to human readers interested in their chief topic. But till some competitor seriously challenges Google by providing significantly more relevant--relevant to human searchers, not algorithmic robots--search responses, the tail will continue to wag the dog.

    Nonsensical or frivolous lawsuits will not change any of that.
     
    Owlcroft, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  18. john_loch

    john_loch Rodent Slayer

    Messages:
    1,294
    Likes Received:
    66
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    138
    #18
    Well **ck Me !

    As I've mentioned in the past, I read more than I post.

    The past few posts from SEOGuru on down have been some of the best posts I've read so far !

    Depth, Quality, Accuracy, and a dog. What more could the tail possibly want (other than 10,000 domains distributed across...) :)

    I love it !
     
    john_loch, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  19. SEOGuru

    SEOGuru Peon

    Messages:
    147
    Likes Received:
    26
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #19
    I will not disagree with you Owlcroft. You make some well thought out points. However, I believe you may be using very ordinary terms to describe extraordinary circumstances.

    My suggesting that Google could be in violation of copyright infringement is not a new concept.

    iProspect, a world-leading search engine positioning services firm, filed suit against 37 search engine positioning companies whose Web sites contain text illegally copied from their web site.

    They notified the infringing companies, and, in conformity with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, also alerted all major search engines and directories of their illegal activity. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, each search engine is required to remove the infringing Web sites from its index.

    Even Google has been quoted in saying that for those people who feel that caching their pages is copyright infringement, use the “noarchive” meta tag to instruct the Google spider not to cache those pages. To me that seems to imply guilt. You shouldn’t be able to steal something then say “well you didn’t tell me NOT to.”

    With that said, under the DMCA Google IS probably protected. But an argument can still be made that they are making money off of a massive use of the “fair use” clause which is not what it was designed for. No doubt, it would be a precedent setting case likely ending up in the Supreme Court.

    I do still think that there are other things that Google is doing that could be brought to court not relating to copyright infringement. Tortious business interference is a topic that can and WILL see the courtroom. Not just in blindly providing unfair advantage to one business over another, but also banning a site at their sole discretion. Additionally, some lawyers have suggested that Google and other search engines can actually be sued for false advertising of searches done with irrelevant results.

    OK, lets go into a new topic as I am bored with the old one. :D

    How about image searches?

    This is a big issue with many Web sites - especially those belonging to artists and graphic designers. They worry that the image search capability just makes easier for others to steal their designs.

    Their fears are probably justified: many casual users seem to feel that everything posted online is in the public domain and theirs to copy, plagiarize, and use any way they please. That happens a lot with text, but images are even more tempting. Searchers may rationalize that it's ok: after all, the search engine downloaded a copy to display in its search results.

    The problem for creators are many:

    • The engines are displaying thumbnails of the images. They have copied the image and created the thumbnail and stored at least the thumbnail, and maybe the full image, in their database. And they did it without the creator's permission.

    • Some of the engines point to the file directly instead of to the page that "contains" the file. This seems to permit the searcher to look at or listen to the file, and to copy it, without really "visiting" (in any meaningful way) the website that hosts the image. The site owner gets a visitor, but not a meaningful visitor.

    • Some of the search engines haven't made clear to their visitors that the images they find are not public domain property. The novice may assume that because the images are shown that they are available for use.
    The search engines are responding to these criticisms:

    • Some have strengthened their notices that images cannot be used without permission. (Creators aren't satisfied.)
    • Some have provided information on how to use a robots.txt file or META tags to stop their engine from indexing the site or a particular page on the site. (Creators say they shouldn't have to do anything.)
    • Some have stopped linking directly to the files, linking instead to the page that "contains" the file.

    Leslie Kelly, a photographer, has filed suit against AltaVista over the indexing of his photographs from his websites. He then filed suit against Arriba Vista for the same.

    A decision by the United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that a search engines' use of small, low quality versions of searched images was a permissible "fair use" and not an infringement of copyright. However, the framing and inline linking of full-size images from another site without consent violates the copyright owner’s rights to publicly display his works. The court essentially held that the link allowing viewing of the photographs at the defendant’s site constituted an unauthorized "public display," and hence an infringement, of the original photographs.

    Are "Passive" Service Providers Still Protected?

    Besides answering the question of whether unauthorized linking or framing of photographs constitutes copyright infringement, the Kelly case is also significant for finding that Arriba was more than a "passive conduit" of the images on its site. Rather, the court found that Arriba was an "active" participant in the copyright infringement "by trolling the Web, finding Kelly’s images, and then having its program inline link and frame those images within its own Web site."

    What is VERY interesting is that the court’s description of Arriba’s program could describe the "passive" activities of virtually any automated service that establishes links or creates inline frames between Web sites. Moreover, the Kelly decision does not address the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. Sec. 152), which provides immunity, or "safe harbors," from copyright infringement claims when the service provider is merely "passive." Until the issue of a "passive" OSP’s liability is resolved, any such service provider would be well-advised to avoid the linking or framing of full-sized images.

    Though I don’t think Google is in violation with its thumbnail images, if you click on the images, you can view them as separate files outside of the website’s intended public display. Now Google DOES also offer a framed link to the original website but by offering the image independently they could be actively facilitating the unauthorized use of the image. I’m sure their lawyers have looked at this and feel they are safe, however there are many other issues regarding what you can link to that have not been fully defined in law.

    Now, how about Headline News and articles?

    Sean Peck, a former software engineer at Lycos started News Index, a small online search engine.

    He was sued by The Times of London for linking to their headlines and temporarily storing abstracts of its copy in the News Index database.
    The Times claimed that along with summaries of its stories, News Index was indexing a "substantial proportion" of its site, which is an infringement of copyright and did not fall under fair use law. One of their main objections was that links from News Index bypassed their home page. They wanted to ensure that users enter their site via the main front page so that the presentation of their material is the one they have constructed, not the one someone else's search engine had constructed. This argument can also be applied to Google linking to internal pages of websites who have spent a lot of time and money to create a specific presentation of content which includes the order in which it is displayed.

    News Index's predicament is one other small news aggregation sites have faced before. And like past cases, if News Index is ultimately sued, the outcome of the case could determine once and for all whether online news headlines are bound by copyright law, thus requiring publishers to get permission before linking to others' Web content. Legal experts say the dispute also stirs up a murky issue facing all full-text search engines: many capture full or partial copies of Web sites in their databases, which could be a violation of copyright as well.

    The commercialization of the Net has brought with it a new string of copyright questions. Unfortunately, virtually all potential test cases have been settled out of court, or have involved small online start-ups that bowed to the pressure of big-time copyright holders.

    The Sheltand Times settled its lawsuit against the Shetland News for linking to its online headlines. The News now can link to the Sheltland Times headlines as long as it maintains its use license and runs the paper's logo next to featured stories. Does Google get a license or display logos next to search results? I’m not saying they have to but I’m just posing the question.
    Many believe that one of the main arguments in these types of cases involves what is known as a "misappropriation of hot news." If a reader can get everything they need to know from the summary of the news article they are providing, then a company could be free-riding on the effort of the originator of the story.

    There are some companies such as Alternative Visions Designs that have specialized in defending online copyright infringements of website designs, content, code, navigation, etc. They actually use many of the guidelines presented in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

    http://www.seologic.com/faq/dmca-notifications.php

    These new topics are now open for discussion. :)
     
    SEOGuru, Jun 3, 2004 IP
  20. Owlcroft

    Owlcroft Peon

    Messages:
    645
    Likes Received:
    34
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #20
    Well, copyright infringement is assuredly a different animal from tortious business practices. The entire area is, at present, murky. Most courts, in dealing with the modern complexities and subtleties of electronic media, have their heads so far up their butts they're looking out their ears. I believe that the Second Circuit (based in New York City, as best I recall) is said to have a decent grasp of technicalities, but the rest, including the usually sophisticated Ninth, seem to be trying to make it up as they go along.

    The DMCA--aka "the Mouse Law"--generally gives strong protection to copyright holders (scarcely a surprise, considering the law's genesis), but also various protections to other big players that sort of offset that. (It is basically a law aimed at protecting The Big Players, and does not discriminate nicely among the various kinds of players.) "Passive carriers" was mainly meant to mean ISPs, the electronic equivalent of physical commerce's "common carriers".

    And while it is true that anyone can sue anyone else for anything, that doesn't necessarily mean that every lawsuit filed, even if it drags on for a while, has any intrinsic merit. One of the informal but bedrock principles courts apply when looking at cases, especially commercial cases, is what sort of damages can the plaintiff reasonably demonstrate, as opposed to theoretical principles violated? That is: OK, maybe they technically shouldn't do this, but really now, how is it hurting you? And how much? Courts are reluctant to apply abstract remedies when there is no manifest harm to remedy.

    That is not to say that no copyright-infringement suits stand a chance: some may. But the plaintiff in such matters always has that double burden: show a violation, *and* show that the violation is doing nontrivial and nonspeculative or hypothetical harm. That second can be quite a burden indeed.
     
    Owlcroft, Jun 4, 2004 IP