In a similar vein (sorry), Google actually breach copyright themselves simply by indexing other people's content;

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/open_source_google_scraper/

PS : Loving the blog!

I can't remember the details but Lawrence Lessig's excellent book Free Culture includes a chapter about a kid who augmented a search engine for his university network and was taken to court for vast sums of money by one of the music publishing companies I think.

All he did was fix the bugs in an existing search interface, and was not responsible for any of the content being shared. But they came down on him like a ton of bricks. If I was being cynical (and I always am) I'd say they wouldn't dare with Google though...

The book is freely available (Creative Commons licence) so you can get and read (or even listen to) it from many places online.

Already read it, although thanks for reminding me of that kid - he lost his place in college as wel didn't he?

Maybe I need to read it again - it's a great book.

Surely if anyone has the funds to fight the various associations it would be Google, who are worth $55bn the last time I looked. Perhaps the EFF need to start hassling Google to be 'no evil'...

Google is aware of this risk and are 'actively working' to honour requests to remove material that is deemed offensive according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. For example, take a look at the results that this search produces:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22kazaa+lite%22&btnG=Google+Search

You will notice that at the bottom, Google have inserted the following comment:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 3 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Interesting, especially the explaination of DMCA law from the link at the bottom.

I'd worry though that should someone get my site removed for copyright infringment - I'd have no way to get it back, as I just don't have the money to hire the lawyers to challenge the notice...