Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

docs.house.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 271 posts

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#31

Post by mike_d »

errantmind wrote: post #20

It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise? Is the issue that the data was scraped? Or is the issue Google appropriated the scraped data for use in their search results? From my perspective it just looks like a bad business model: spend a lot of time and effort estimating net worth, and then publ…

This has been settled case law for decades thanks to sports almanacs. Facts (like someones net worth) cannot be copyrighted. However a compilation of facts can be.

If CNW had published a book, Google purchased it off of Amazon, and paid an intern to retype it in to fact boxes - that is clear copyright violation.

The fact that Google bought the data from a third party data broker who scraped CNW does not absolve them of liability in my mind.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#32

Post by system2 »

I felt sad reading the whole thing. I searched "will smith net worth" and after wikipedia snippet, the first result was celebrity net worth.

CNW depends on google, uses them to make money. Google is a search tool and wants to show whatever results makes users happy. CNW can simply remove itself from the platform and tell google never to use their data. It almost sounds like CNW is trying to bite the hand of only company made them something. I feel bad for CNW but this is natural. I've seen many of my and my clients' sites go rock bottom because of google updates.

"Google Stole My Business" sounds harsh. More like "google doesn't do what I want them to do." CNW was nothing before google. Maybe CNW could make technical changes to their content the way wallpaper/graphics sites made changes after google image search updates.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#33

Post by errantmind »

mike_d wrote: post #31
errantmind wrote: post #20

It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise? Is the issue that the data was scraped? Or is the issue Google appropriated the scraped data for use in their search results? From my perspective it just looks like a bad business model: spend a lot of time and effort estimating net worth, and then publ…

This has been settled case law for decades thanks to sports almanacs. Facts (like someones net worth) cannot be copyrighted. However a compilation of facts can be. If CNW had published a book, Google purchased it off of Amazon, and paid an intern to retype it in to fact boxes - that is clear copyright violation. The fact that Google bought the data from a third party data broker who scraped CNW does not absolve them…

What you are saying about compilations makes sense, but was it a compilation in that sense? My interpretation was it was just a bunch of data spread over public pages on a website. It seems like if that constitutes a compilation, it would expand copyright by a lot

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#37

Post by praveen9920 »

I'm not sure if this is ethical and legal problem. But one thing for sure is Google has too much leverage both technically and financially.

Google has slowly increased the reliability on Google for consumers everywhere that they are essentially a monopoly which is bad for the market. It is about time a new player comes into picture with same user interface and different business model which can empower these internet entrepreneurs.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#38

Post by huffmsa »

system2 wrote: post #32

I felt sad reading the whole thing. I searched "will smith net worth" and after wikipedia snippet, the first result was celebrity net worth. CNW depends on google, uses them to make money. Google is a search tool and wants to show whatever results makes users happy. CNW can simply remove itself from the platform and tell google never to use their data. It almost sounds like CNW is trying to bite the hand of only comp…

"Google Takes My Data and Presents It as Their Own" a better title for you?

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#39

Post by philprx »

errantmind wrote: post #28
philprx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the business model of many online blogs and sites, and get payment through ads. Of course it's not a really strong model now that ads revenue are going down. It was a strong one not so long ago. Now it's clearly IPR theft, present it how you like, but theft is theft. Plus it's not really smart from Google given their prior contact and request to this company on APIs and providing it for free. Now the real questi…

>> Now it's clearly IPR theft, present it how you like, but theft is theft. I don't quite see the legal basis for it being theft. Can you explain?

IANAL:

1. Google doesn't show in-line'd data box with Net worth

2. Google asks site (CNW) for access, is denied.

3. Google then shows site's data in data box (with CNW site proof of theft with canary tokens being the fake celebrity's net worth) that are now presented as Google's data (no source or fake source), without license from original site.

If that isn't theft of data, what is it?

From the PDFs, there is no license for free re-use ;-)

While I'm all-in for freedom of information and open source documentation license or open data licenses, I fully understand the need of businesses to protect their intellectual property and rights.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#40

Post by huffmsa »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #6

I think Google is in the right here. Facts are not protected by copyright and they shouldn't be. Imagine being able to copyright the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. It would be a disaster.

Let's reframe it.

> My company "Expected Home Prices" employs a dozen researchers and analysts who generate predictions of the worth of particular properties.

> Google Takes our predictions wholesale, and displays them without attribution or payment as their own data.

See the problem here?

Post reply on HN