The world’s most popular search engine can also be used to find pictures available on the Internet. Like a vacuum cleaner the image search engine scans the Internet for pictures and creates small-sized copies – thumbnails – to display them in its search results. Here the problem starts. Google does not ask the owners of the pictures for permission. Then the images are in-line linked to the originating Internet-page which pops up in a framed window. Is this In-Line-Linking already a display by Google or is it just a hint to someone else’s website content? What if the originating page itself uses images without permission of the copyright owner? Is Google liable for these infringing displays by others although it only offered a thumbnail-copy with a link or is there a fair use of protected matieral on the Internet? How can copyright owners protect their pictures from being used illegally? The blog-author answers these and other questions in his remarks to the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit of December 3rd 2007 in re Perfect 10 Inc. et al. v. Google Inc., 06-55406.
Robert Mittelstaedt’s more extensive German introduction into the issues under American law, in German, are found at: http://amrecht.com/mittelstaedtgoogle2008.shtml