{"id":7405,"date":"2013-02-04T16:20:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T23:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2016-12-07T12:12:13","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T19:12:13","slug":"is-googles-new-image-search-violating-their-own-policies-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onthewingphotography.com\/wings\/2013\/02\/04\/is-googles-new-image-search-violating-their-own-policies-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Google’s New Image Search Violating Their Own Policies? The Law?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"copyright-notice2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been doing more research about Google’s update it its Image Search and have come across a few things that I find of interest. I will be providing links and telling my viewers which paragraphs to look for and adding a short quote from the pages which I believe falls under “Fair Use” since I will not be grabbing the entire content of a page or making screen shots which might be in violation of copyright laws.<\/p>\n

Let’s discuss the first question in my title: Is Google’s New Image Search Violating Their Own Policies?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe they are, take a look at Google’s Terms of Service for people who have Blogger Blogs on a page called Blogger Content Policy<\/span><\/strong>: http:\/\/draft.blogger.com\/content.g?hl=en<\/a><\/p>\n

One\u00a0paragraph\u00a0on that page; outlining what Google expects from the users of their free blogging platform, stands out in clearly written language.<\/p>\n

Copyright:<\/strong> It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. More information about our copyright procedures can be found here<\/a>. Also, please don’t provide links to sites where your readers can obtain unauthorized downloads of other people’s content.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I made that one sentence red so it would also stand out clearly. So; let me get this straight, according to Google’s terms of service for the people who publish blogs on their Blogger platform tell those users to not provide links where other people can download our content without our authorization.<\/p>\n

But Google is providing links to our content and facilitating unauthorized downloads of that content. <\/span><\/p>\n

Does Google apply or follow the same terms of service to themselves as they do to their users? It sure looks like they don’t, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

I recently discovered one of my juvenile Red-tailed Hawks in flight on a Google Blogger blog, the image was “hot linked” to my web site galleries and I sent in a DMCA Copyright Infringement Notification to Google to\u00a0have the image hot link removed. This is their reply and response to my notification:<\/p>\n

\n
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Hello,<\/p>\n

Thanks for reaching out to us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\n
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In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have completed processing your infringement notice. We are in the process of disabling access to the content in question at the following URL(s):<\/p>\n

http:\/\/birdsflyingpictures.blogspot.com\/2013\/01\/mvscience-tailed-hawk.html<\/a><\/p>\n

The content will be removed shortly.<\/p>\n

Please let us know if we can assist you further. If you would like to file additional requests, we ask that you contact us by using the online forms at: www.google.com\/support\/go\/legal as we do not accept add-on requests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Regards,
\nThe Google Team<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I went to the offending URL to make sure that my image was no longer displayed on a Google Blogger Blog and this is what I saw:<\/div>\n
\"page-removed\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Not only did they remove the hot link to my image they removed all<\/span> of the content on that blogger’s post.<\/p>\n

But wait; isn’t Google doing the exact same thing this blogger was doing by hot linking to my image files on Google’s new Image Search engine?<\/p>\n

Yeah, they are, they are infringing in the SAME<\/strong> manner as the owner of this Google blog had been.<\/p>\n

Shame on Google for not following their own terms of service in regards to\u00a0the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, shame, shame, shame.<\/p>\n

Next question: Is Google’s New Image Search Violating The Law?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It sure looks that way to me.<\/p>\n

Let’s visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s pages on Intellectual Property theft and read the statements on their Anti-piracy Warning Seal page: http:\/\/www.fbi.gov\/about-us\/investigate\/white_collar\/ipr\/download-the-fbis-anti-piracy-warning-seal#unauthorized<\/a><\/p>\n

Warning language specifying current penalties<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n