NewsScan Daily: July 8, 2003
"COURT SAYS THUMBNAIL IMAGE LINKING IS FAIR USE
A federal appeals court ruled that a search engine's display of miniature images of copyrighted works is allowed under fair use, upholding a similar ruling in February 2002. The plaintiff in the case, photographer Leslie Kelly, had sued image search engine firm Arriba Soft over thumbnail images of her works that were accessible via Arriba's Ditto.com search engine. Yesterday's decision, however, failed to confirm the legality of displaying full-size images in search results -- a practice known as in-line linking or framing -- and that case is now ordered to go to trial. 'As to the first action (on thumbnails), the district court correctly found that Arriba's use was fair. However, as to the second action, we conclude that the district court should not have reached the issue because neither party moved for summary judgment as to the full-size images,' according to the opinion. The framing technique is used by a number of visual search engines, including Google, Lycos and AltaVista. Nevertheless, the ruling was viewed as a victory by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had filed a brief in favor of Arriba. 'Web site owners can rest a bit easier about linking to copyrighted materials online,' said an EFF staff attorney. 'By revising its ruling, the court removed a copyright iceberg from the main shipping lanes of the World Wide Web.' (CNet News.com 7 Jul 2003) http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1023629.html?tag=lh "
"COURT SAYS THUMBNAIL IMAGE LINKING IS FAIR USE
A federal appeals court ruled that a search engine's display of miniature images of copyrighted works is allowed under fair use, upholding a similar ruling in February 2002. The plaintiff in the case, photographer Leslie Kelly, had sued image search engine firm Arriba Soft over thumbnail images of her works that were accessible via Arriba's Ditto.com search engine. Yesterday's decision, however, failed to confirm the legality of displaying full-size images in search results -- a practice known as in-line linking or framing -- and that case is now ordered to go to trial. 'As to the first action (on thumbnails), the district court correctly found that Arriba's use was fair. However, as to the second action, we conclude that the district court should not have reached the issue because neither party moved for summary judgment as to the full-size images,' according to the opinion. The framing technique is used by a number of visual search engines, including Google, Lycos and AltaVista. Nevertheless, the ruling was viewed as a victory by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had filed a brief in favor of Arriba. 'Web site owners can rest a bit easier about linking to copyrighted materials online,' said an EFF staff attorney. 'By revising its ruling, the court removed a copyright iceberg from the main shipping lanes of the World Wide Web.' (CNet News.com 7 Jul 2003) http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1023629.html?tag=lh "