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Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

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Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#81

Post by ipaddr »

akrymski wrote: post #41

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 copyr…

It's been over 20 years since the PageRank paper was released. We're past that point and they stopped using PageRank 15 years ago.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#82

Post by dataflow »

whaleofatw2022 wrote: post #72
dataflow wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable. I don't think a map is a good example. A picture is probably a better one. A map, by its very definition, is not a replica of any part of the original artifact. Not merely because a map is not the territory, but also because it's not even a direct, unaltered view of the thing. There is clearly some creat…

Where it gets tricky is that, at least in past US case law, 'maps are facts' and thus cannot be copyrighted as easily (this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them) [0] [0] - I believe a specific case was Nintendo vs Prima publishing, which was even involving a map of a fictitious construct.

IIUC that particular case has details that don't fit into the general scenario I mentioned, and they affected its outcome.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#83

Post by ocdtrekkie »

asdefghyk wrote: post #34
Terr_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to imagine how the world would be different, if internet advertising giants were partially liable for scams/malware that they facilitate.

I recall a articale I read "somewhere" that reported the Facebook makes big profit (Billions) from scams. So they have no ( or no strong motive) motive to shut such scams down An example is courtcase against Meta for using a Australians mining billionares likeness to promote a crypo investment scam. https://www.afr.com/technology/dad-it-s-a-fraud-call-that-sp...

This is why Section 230 is fundamentally wrong. Because the core concept of it assumes reasonable behavior without monetary incentives. Which is great if you're legislating someone's personal forum about their hobby. But Section 230 applied to the ad industry is incredibly, incredibly broken, because advertising companies do not have any incentive to act in good faith.

As soon as a dollar of profit is involved in a content moderation decision, a business should be fully liable for the decisions around content on their platform. If I report an ad to Facebook and Facebook decides to keep it they should be accepting legal responsibility for that ad.

You want to stop scams online, you make the platforms liable and then grant them the ability to recover the losses by going after the advertisers.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#84

Post by benoau »

nicce wrote: post #58
binarymax wrote: post #7

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.

I wonder how this changes things (EU forces to share search data): https://abcnews.com/Technology/wireStory/eu-forces-google-sh...

Doesn't the US too, following Google's antitrust loss last year?

> Judge Mehta said in the 223-page ruling that Google must share some of its search data with “qualified competitors” to resolve its monopoly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/google-search-...

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#85

Post by 1saadcodes »

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

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#86

Post by janalsncm »

fpoling wrote: post #74
janalsncm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first of the two steps is a web search. The model didn’t answer from its trained weights.

The model just asked the crawler to get a recent copy of relevant pages and used that to give the answer. That is why AI companies experimenting with browsers or at least agentic extensions to browsers as that allows to fetch on behalf of the user directly from the device with a residential IP and ditch expensive to maintain crawling infrastructure.

> relevant pages

If you want to know what the relevant pages are, you need a search index.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#87

Post by WarmWash »

Terr_ wrote: post #25
jonatron wrote: post #6

It's quite important that SERPs are scrapeable, because they keep advertising scams like ETA/ESTA sites: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56886957

It's interesting to imagine how the world would be different, if internet advertising giants were partially liable for scams/malware that they facilitate.

Ironically it's only really people who heavily ad-block/privacy-protect that get these scam/malware ads.

When Google has no profile on you, your view is virtually worthless, so it's only bottom feeders that bid on those views.

Average users get Coke and Tide ads. Its usually the most technically adept that get the worst ads, and usually they just turn their ad block back on.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#88

Post by WarmWash »

echelon wrote: post #17
beloch wrote: post #16

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.

Google has no moat anymore. - Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore. - Coding models make doing extreme depth of work possible. - Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products. - Just the other day, someone cloned Google Gsuite and it looked awesome - Drive and Search w…

Google's most is that people use ad-block and back-door subscriptions.

Every competitor dies in the womb because "subscriptions are bs and ads are cancer" is totally normalized.

If you want Google to fall, start giving ad-loads or money to companies trying to compete.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#89

Post by ssl-3 »

krupan wrote: post #76
FabCH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Sonnet 5 Medium more or less on the timestamp of the comment: Prompt: Who won the 2026 World Cup? Answer: Spain won the 2026 World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time in the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19. Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the 106th minute, coming on as a substitute in the 62nd minute. It’s Spain’s second World Cup title, having also won in 2010. Prompt: Nearby BBQ places open…

Did it do a Google search to learn all that up to date information?

Almost certainly. That's OK, isn't it? Folks have been Googling things poorly for as long as there has been a Google to Google with, and now they have bots that do it on their behalf.

The only issue is that the eyeballs stayed with the LLM, which allows it to hold a position that is potentially very powerful. This is particularly problematic with people who believe that computers are infallible.

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