Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, September 29, 2004

On Google news and copyright

Adam L. Penenberg, Google News: Beta Not Make Money, Wired News, September 29, 2004. Penenberg explores why Google News, a site that crawls multiple news sites and gives readers a choice of sources to view, remains in beta. He explains that Google cannot derive advertising revenue from others' headlines and lead paragraphs or risk violating copyright law. Evidently, Google News has run into copyright troubles in other countries such as Germany and Hong Kong. Ironically, Penenberg notes that Google's founders sent a cease and desist letter to one who devised RSS feeds for Google News, saying they don't allow "'webmasters to display Google News headlines on their sites.'" (Source: Scripting News)