>What you've failed to mention is the criteria used to determine if a usage is indeed "fair".
Yes, I understand that the criteria for fair use is defined in the statute. What I'm saying is that like most things brought before judges, arguments can be made either way, and judges seemingly favor Google but not smaller defendants. Thus, while the RAM copies of web pages made by Google are fair use, those made by RMG aren't.
If you look at the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Perfect 10, the length they stretch to reverse the District Court's finding of thumbnails as infringing is ridiculous. It's pretty clear that thumbnails are direct infringements and that you don't invalidate the copyright or create a truly "transformative use" by making it smaller and adding it to an index. Perfect 10 was certainly of this opinion, and I'm sure they saw a real impact to their revenue.
Over the years I've learned that no position is too high to disregard the human factor. 99% of the time people are going to act primarily to their own benefit and work backwards to find rational (or rational-sounding) arguments to justify it. Judges are politicians and they're very image-conscious. None of them wants to be the one to make Google Image Search useless.
You seem to be saying that since Google's use was found non-infringing in these cases, its use is objectively non-infringing. I don't agree with this. Rather, I think that Google's conduct is a pretty plain violation of the relevant statute(s) and that most of it is not covered under fair use, the way the laws are currently written. I think that judges apply the statute in full force when smaller defendants present, but that they have a bias for Google (which is really a bias for themselves, since they know that serious backlash awaits the judge who puts the kabosh on it) that causes them to contort the law pretty heavily so that they can rule the way they want to.
>Actually, under fair use you certainly can make a personal copy (see Betamax case).
See, we were on the right track before we got into networks. Since then, the rulings have been pretty darn bad. The modern "Betamax case" may well have been American Broadcasting Cos. v. Aereo, Inc. [0], and it wasn't a win for us.
Note also that separate from the copyright concern, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent a copy protection device (or indeed, even to teach another how to do so). Since Netflix employs DRM, even if there is a fair-use right to a copy of a Netflix program (which is by no means certain), you'd probably have to break the DMCA to obtain it.
>The robots.txt relevancy is being over stated in your argument. The main criteria used in this case is summarized above. The fact that Google provides an opt-out mechanism is a secondary, supporting argument.
I disagree. Google has been able to discharge all CFAA claims because the judges have said "Well, you knew there was a way to stop it." If that's the logic, I'll happily inform the parties I may scrape that there's a way to stop it.
>A determination of infringement would depend entirely on the context as related to the afore mentioned criteria.
Yes, I understand that the judge would write a report that appeared to consider the relevant criteria. The real question is, would that judge be willing to make the same logical contortions that other judges have made for Google?
I think that he would just go in favor of his biases, and right now we have a judiciary that is heavily biased against the little guy from the start, and this is only exacerbated by an inability to retain hotshot lawyers.
>My understanding is that the copyright part of the case was thrown out and thus was settled solely around CFAA matters.
The only portion of the copyright claim that was dismissed was Craigslist's claim that it owned an exclusive license in the scraped content. This was based on a short-lived ToU update that was specifically intended to strengthen Cragislist's case in this instance. The remaining copyright-related claims were allowed to stand, including a claim that Padmapper had violated a copyright Craigslist holds on the collection of advertisements (rather than on the advertisements themselves). [1]
>[re: RMG] I agree that the logic used for the judgement is absurd (for reasons that are plainly obvious to any HN user).
If you agree the logic was absurd, you agree that a copy of the page that exists in RAM for microseconds does not qualify as a protected copy any more than the reflection of an image on one's retina qualifies. As a "copy" that should be ineligible for copy protection, it doesn't matter if it qualifies for fair use (and I don't necessarily agree that it wouldn't).
> [re: Facebook v. Power] This is not a case involving a defense of fair use (as far as I can tell).
Correct. I was including it because it's an example of Google getting another free pass for stuff that shuts others down, which is the CFAA. CFAA claims are raised against Google in at least Field and Perfect 10, and they get dismissed based on the judge's assumption that the plaintiff knows about the special steps Google makes you take to stop them from violating the CFAA, the absurdity of which we've already discussed.
My wording that the "findings were very similar" was definitely bad since a different law was in play. I meant they were very similar in nature, not in fact. That said, it's likely the only reason that the cached pages weren't considered infringement is that Facebook didn't bring it up.
>But none of the evidence you've cited supports the argument that Google is infringing copyrights in its core activities nor that Google is the only entity where copyright laws and fair use legislation don't apply.
Again, I'm discussing this from a practical position, not one that is strictly compliant with legal theory, where judges always enforce the law with perfect equity, and in which anything a judge (or jury) finds becomes Official Truth de-facto.
From a textbook perspective, sure, everyone has all the same rights and the legal system is always applied equitably. I simply don't believe that has borne out in practice when it comes to internet-centric companies that aren't household names.
It seems that the things Google does are considered infringement when other people do them. Thus, it behooves to know the actual law and follow it, even if Google gets a free pass, since we can't rely the judiciary to interpret the law favorably for us.
RMG is a great example because it occurred after Perfect 10, and the same argument against RAM copies was raised in both cases. It's apparently fair use if Google scrapes your page to download and rehost all of your images, but it's not fair use to read out non-copyrightable factual data unobtainable from any other source (like ticket prices and event times) and rehost it nowhere. Sure.
The alternate lesson here is to focus on getting really big and powerful really quickly, and making sure you cultivate a good public image, so that judges are afraid to rule against you in ways that would affect a product offering upon which millions of people depend. That seems to have worked for most big internet companies, actually. Definitely worked for Facebook and Google.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos._v._....
[1] http://www.dmlp.org/sites/dmlp.org/files/2013-04-30-Order%20... pgs. 9-16