Google loses two copyright cases in Germany

SEARCH ENGINE BEHEMOTH Google has lost two copyright lawsuits in Germany for showing photos and comic book art as thumbnails in its search results.

A Hamburg court ruled that Googantua's thumbalised search preview of photographer Michael Bernhard’s pictures as well as those of comics drawn by German artist Thomas Horn, violates their copyright.

In its ruling for Bernhard, the court strictly scolded, "It doesn't matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution. By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created''. And thus, there is no justification for Google to use them without artist permission. In Germany.

Luckily for Google, the rulings can be appealed, and appeal Google will. The Gog of the Internet told Paid Content it was, "disappointed and intends to appeal the ruling to the German Supreme Court because we believe that services like Google Image Search are entirely legal”. The statement went on, “today's decision is very bad for Internet users in Germany, it is a major step backwards for German e-business in general, and it is bad for the thousands of websites who receive valuable traffic through Image Search and similar services."

This is not Google’s first copyright court case on thumbnailing pics. Porn firm Perfect 10 objected to Google using and abusing its saucy pics on Google pages, a case Google initially lost until it decided to cum back and appeal. The decision was overturned with the court ruling that the creation of thumbnails fell within the exceptions granted by US copyright law for transformative use.

Google also found itself in the merde with a Belgian newspaper trade group last year, lo sing a ruling in the Belgian courts on the issue of reproducing newspaper content for Google News. Google is still appealing that one.

Google’s defeat in this latest German case means the onus is on the Internet search engine giant to now figure out by itself which images are copyrighted and which are not. The enormity of such a task means the firm will probably just have to forgoe image searches in the country all together.

Shame the judges couldn’t see the bigger picture. µ

L'Inqs
Paid Content
Bloomberg

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