Technology Copyright

1. Google does not violate the rights granted to copyright owners under 17 USC106. The company’s actions with cached links fall within the provisions of this law because it does not distort works in ways that are harmful to reputation or market value.

2. Two rights directly affected by the actions of Google are the first and third cases in 17 USC 106. In regard to the first case, Google does in fact “reproduce the copyrighted work” when it produces a cache of the document, though it does so in a different format. As it regards the second case, Google distributes “copies […] of the copyrighted work” in a manner that might be considered “lending” to whoever requests it by clicking on the cache link.

3. The provisions of the Fair Use limitation does justify Google’s use of cache’s. According to 17 USC 107, fair use exists if the work is being used non-commercially or for educational purposes. Google gains no direct monetary benefit from its caches, so it is justified in this aspect. The limitation also considers “the nature of the copyrighted work,” and as Google usually cache’s works that are already available online, it seems also to be protected by this part. The third part of the Fair Use limitation would appear to implicate Google, as the company does cache (in most cases) the entire work. However, because Google’s cache service does not usually have a negative effect on the market value of the work in question (as stipulated by the fourth part of 17 USC 107), it appears to be justified by almost the entire statute.

4. The DMCA does justify Google’s cached links in its Title II section. The law allows Google’s actions as it is an automatic storage process that allows which is temporary and intermediate. The law also protects caches when the material being transmitted has already been made available by the author—as is the case with Google’s cache. Furthermore, because Google’s action is non-volitional, but is dependent on the user who clicks the link for the cache, the liability does not lie with Google (Band, 2006).

References

17 USC 106. “Rights of certain authors to attribution and integrity.” Bitlaw: a resource on        technology law. Beck & Tysver. Retrieved on September 28, 2007 from   http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/106.html

17 USC 107. “Rights of certain authors to attribution and integrity.” Bitlaw: a resource on        technology law. Beck & Tysver. Retrieved on September 28, 2007 from

            http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/107.html

Band, Jonathan. (2006). “A new day for website archiving: Field v. Google and Parker v.          Google.” Technology and Law Policy. Washington DC: Policy Bandwidth. Retrieved on           September 29, 2007 from http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/webarchivefinal.pdf

DMCA. (1998). “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” THOMAS. The Library of Congress.             Retrieved on September 28, 2007 from http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-            bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR:

Google. (2007). Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Retrieved on September 28, 2007 from             http://www.google.com/dmca.html