Binarycse Blog

Google has taken the rare step of asking a California judge to declare that by linking to copyright-infringing works on Rapidshare, the search giant is not facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted songs.Blue Destiny Records, a small blues-oriented music label, sued Google, Microsoft and Rapidshare in Florida. The label claimed that Rapidshare was running “a distribution center for unlawful copies of copyrighted works,” and that Google and Microsoft’s Bing search engine were helping to prop up the company. The label argued that users can easily find copyrighted songs on file-hosting websites by doing a simple search query.

But in late March, Blue Destiny voluntarily withdrew its lawsuit. Google then asked the company to waive the right to pursue its copyright allegations. According to Google, the label refused, preserving its option to refile its claims.

Now Google has decided that it wants the court battle. The company has filed a 96-page complaint with the California district court, asking for a declaratory judgment that it’s not infringing Blue Destiny’s copyrights.

Google is showing a bit of hubris in its latest move. By going on the offensive, Google gets to do battle with a much smaller company in the inevitable fight over whether search engines facilitate copyright infringement. Plus, Google gets a more favorable jurisdiction than a Florida court. The Ninth Circuit has been friendly to Google in similar litigation with Perfect 10, an adult entertainment publisher that tried to punish search engines for indexing copyrighted photos.
Google has now sued the indie, asking a more friendly Californian court to provide a declaratory judgement whether links to cyberlockers constitute infringement. Victory would ensure a significant area of liability for Google would be removed. But even Reuters is moved to describe Google’s response as “hubristic”.

As well as drawing attention to the disparity in the resources available to Google and companies who depend on copyright – Google’s annual revenue is larger than the entire global record industry – the aggressive litigation also sends out a message to copyright businesses that they should not dare to antagonise the internet giant.

The mood has changed significantly in recent months. While Google may win this court battle, it may be losing the longer, bigger war.

The trade unions have swung behind the creators, in the shape of the TUC-backed Creative Coalition Campaign in the UK, and the AFL-CIO in the US. The release of emails in the Viacom litigation showed Google executives burying their ethical reservations and buying YouTube anyway – so much for “Do no evil”.