I'd be more OK with this if Google had a good API for their search results. But they've deprecated it, and now there is no alternative. So I'll continue to use 3rd parties that scrape Google results, until they change their mind.
This ruling might feel good viscerally, but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. At its inception, Google probably viewed this lawsuit as win-win. Either they successfully sue a competitor into oblivion or establish a precedent that will protect themselves in the future. Google lost, but they still won.
(IANAL) I think that the deeper thing from this lawsuit is that from my understanding, (inherently) Search engines are considered public indexes and the data (URL's,index) behind it is considered uncopyrighted and as such aren't protected by DMCA because DMCA only works for copyrighted contents and thus the dismissal of the lawsuit by the Judge.
Basically, search engines are publicly scrapable, though I do wonder as from a law point of view, that it must be within the murky waters as to what a search engine means in terms of seperating its search engine code/its recomendation engine and the public data much of which are intertwined with each other.
I believe that the argument that could be made is that the recommendation engine is the way it is because of all the data and its unseperable to really copyright the whole mechanism in all its glory.
Speaking of which, it seems that AI models feel really similar. Does this judge lawsuit show that AI model weights aren't copyrightable as well? If a search engine is built on public indexes then so are the AI models. I was just writing similar comment on another thread but it seems to be the case, definitely worth a blog article or thinking more about perhaps this judgement by this judge itself in general as well, I just have a vibe that this judgement has pretty far reaching consequences in its impact.
EU protects a database creator if there has been a qualitative or quantitative "substantial investment" in obtaining, verifying, or presenting the content, regardless of creative expression.
In USA copyright requires a minimum degree of original creativity in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the data.
I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable. There's a rather large amount of effort involved in crawling and ranking the web - the PageRank itself should be copyrightable.
> The whole thing was just “we don’t like that this is happening, so we’re suing.”
Typical behavior from a big company with immense resources. They probably thought they would get a settlement or SerpAPI could not afford to fight. I assume they are pretty small, at least in comparison to Google (I've never heard of them).
Google has so much money that even a "loser pays" requirement on litigation probably would not disuade them.
SerpAPI is probably paid by most of the marketing industry to monitor their own position in Google results. And those guys seem to have unlimited money.
The irony is that Google's success was built on crawling and indexing the open web. I understand wanting to protect your product, but once you remove affordable APIs and then object to third parties filling that gap, you're creating demand for the very behavior you're trying to discourage
I think this case is clearly directed at OpenAI and Anthropic, how do you think those guys get google results when the model searches for things for live data....
"Accordingly, the Court cannot reasonably infer that such licensing agreements grant Google authorization to deploy technological measures to control access to the copyrighted content at issue."
"Under Iqbal's plausibility standard, Google must, but has not, alleged factual matter that raises the inference that copyright owners authorized the implementation of SearchGuard as a technological measure to control access to copyrighted content. Allegations that Google has licenses to display copyrighted content in the Knowledge Panel are not sufficient, without more, to raise that inference."
Is the "Knowledge Panel" (KP) in SERPs comprised of copyrighted content
If yes, do KP licensing agreements grant Google authorization to deploy technological measures to control access to the copyrighted content
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 19.7 ms ] threadGoogle vs. SerpApi: The Court Granted Our Motion to Dismiss
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48995411
Ah, good old times.
Basically, search engines are publicly scrapable, though I do wonder as from a law point of view, that it must be within the murky waters as to what a search engine means in terms of seperating its search engine code/its recomendation engine and the public data much of which are intertwined with each other.
I believe that the argument that could be made is that the recommendation engine is the way it is because of all the data and its unseperable to really copyright the whole mechanism in all its glory.
Speaking of which, it seems that AI models feel really similar. Does this judge lawsuit show that AI model weights aren't copyrightable as well? If a search engine is built on public indexes then so are the AI models. I was just writing similar comment on another thread but it seems to be the case, definitely worth a blog article or thinking more about perhaps this judgement by this judge itself in general as well, I just have a vibe that this judgement has pretty far reaching consequences in its impact.
In USA copyright requires a minimum degree of original creativity in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the data.
I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable. There's a rather large amount of effort involved in crawling and ranking the web - the PageRank itself should be copyrightable.
Typical behavior from a big company with immense resources. They probably thought they would get a settlement or SerpAPI could not afford to fight. I assume they are pretty small, at least in comparison to Google (I've never heard of them).
Google has so much money that even a "loser pays" requirement on litigation probably would not disuade them.
Google respects if one doesnt want to get indexed by the crawler:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...
Alphabet is an Anthropic investor
Looking forward to the Amended Complaint by August 10
https://searchengineland.com/inside-google-searchguard-46767...
"Accordingly, the Court cannot reasonably infer that such licensing agreements grant Google authorization to deploy technological measures to control access to the copyrighted content at issue."
"Under Iqbal's plausibility standard, Google must, but has not, alleged factual matter that raises the inference that copyright owners authorized the implementation of SearchGuard as a technological measure to control access to copyrighted content. Allegations that Google has licenses to display copyrighted content in the Knowledge Panel are not sufficient, without more, to raise that inference."
Is the "Knowledge Panel" (KP) in SERPs comprised of copyrighted content
If yes, do KP licensing agreements grant Google authorization to deploy technological measures to control access to the copyrighted content
https://www.stackmatix.com/blog/how-to-get-google-knowledge-...