Court says Google Thumbnails are fair use

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Court says Google Thumbnails are fair use

oddsod

7:56 pm on May 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

Google said the thumbnail images were "fair use" and the court agreed they were "highly transformative" work.
The original ruling had said that Google's thumbnails could undermine Perfect 10's efforts to sell small images to mobile phone users.

BBC [news.bbc.co.uk] Ś EFF [eff.org]

Warning: The destination sites discussed here may not be work safe. And I'm not talking just Google.com :)

BigDave

8:15 pm on May 16, 2007 (gmt 0)

Given that the lower court's ruling went against precedent on thumbnails, you should have seen this one coming. Arriba has been cited in so many cases that the District judge was foolish to rule the way that he did without some sort of support from the circuit level.

dragsterboy

12:13 pm on May 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

you have to read the comments on Digg about that.

oddsod

1:09 pm on May 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

Anyone here had any actual monetary loss stemming from someone else using their thumbnails?

maccas

1:18 pm on May 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

Anyone here had any actual monetary loss stemming from someone else using their thumbnails?

Yes a site in the past used thumbnails from one of my sites for a particular topic , ranked above me for that particular topic (subject photos) and we both had adsense on the page. I made her to remove them however.

<edit>looking up the definition of a thumbnail 80 to 200 pixels, the images that site used were slightly larger than that.</edit>

BigDave

6:41 pm on May 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

Yes a site in the past used thumbnails from one of my sites for a particular topic

That's not the same thing. If they take your thumbnails, that is copyright infringement. If they make thumbnails of your images AND have many other fair use factors in their favor, then it is probably legal.