more on SiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon Valley

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim McCoy <mccoy () allmydata com>
Date: June 30, 2005 8:42:02 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: davidu () everydns net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on SiliconValley.com - Good Morning Silicon  
Valley



On Jun 30, 2005, at 6:07 AM,  "David A. Ulevitch"  
<davidu () everydns net> wrote:

> Surely this must be a joke.  Any content publisher can block google  
> from crawling and/or caching their site:
> [...]
> If content publishers are concerned about this then the solution  
> for them is not only trivial but also well published and directly  
> listed on Google's FAQ.

The question that will be raised does seem a bit obvious:

Why do you assume that a content publisher needs to take a pro-active  
measure to limit copyright infringement?

This is not about publishers not wanting google to crawl their site,  
it is about publishers not needing to tell google that they cannot  
infringe upon the publisher's copyright (e.g. cache the content) just  
because google has the ability to do so.  Does the publisher also  
need to tell StreamCast/Grokster that they do not want their content  
to be shared on that particular p2p network?  Do they need to include  
statements or special configurations for all potential infringers?

What distinguishes google from others in this space is that they do  
cache the info in their servers.  Google's current policy seems to be  
that it is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, and the  
fact that setting no-cache is a bit of per-page metadata (rather than  
a per-site item that can be set) it is not a large leap to wonder if  
this might be considered an unreasonable requirement being placed on  
the content owner. This is a dangerous game for Google to be playing  
right now...

Jim



-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/