Is Google’s image search illegal?
Google Image Search is, unsurprisingly, a search service created by Google which allows users to search the Web for images. According to Google, the keywords for the image search are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image. (Users can even use Google Image Labeler to label images and help improve the quality of Google’s image search results.) Search results display a thumbnail of each image matching a user’s search criteria. When clicking on a thumbnail, users are then taken to the website from which that image was found.
It sounds harmless enough but, under copyright law, is Google’s thumbnail of the image in its search results an impermissible copy of the image in violation of the copyright owner’s rights? A pair of court cases in Germany has recently ruled that it is. (Google is now appealing the decisions.) The leading case on this issue in the United States, however, Kelly v. Arriba Soft , reached the opposite result back in 2003, finding that the search-engine operator’s thumbnails were a “fair use” of the plaintiff’s images – the plaintiff in this case being a photographer. In ruling that such thumbnails were a fair use, the court noted that the search engine was a public benefit, only minimally invading the integrality of the plaintiff’s images, and ultimately benefiting the plaintiff by driving people to the his work.
–Matt
