Google wins a court battle

Well score one of the good guys! Looks like Google is fighting the good fight with regard to fair use. Whether or not this will hold forever however, remains to be seen. Let’s check back in a year or so, shall we?

The lawsuit was filed by Gordon Roy Parker, also known as Ray Gordon, who publishes his writings under the business name of Snodgrass Publishing Group. Parker, of Philadelphia, also posted a chapter of one of his e-books on the Usenet bulletin board network, a collection of thousands of discussion forums called newsgroups.

In his 2004 lawsuit against Google, Parker alleged that the search giant violated copyright law by automatically archiving a copy of his posting on Usenet and by providing excerpts from his Web site in search results.

However, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled on Friday that under case law, Google’s activities, akin to those of an Internet Service Provider, do not constitute infringement (click for PDF of court documents). Source: News..com

[tags]pdf,usenet,internet service providera,adobe acrobat,eastern district of pennsylvania[/tags]