Search Engines Violating Copyright Laws?

Posted by Devin Categories: Internet

Is Canada about to outlaw search engines and Internet archive sites?  Bill C-60, which calls to amend the Copyright Act, hints that it just may be illegal for sites such as Google or the Internet Archive to provide someone with copyrighted information through “information-location tools”.  Right now, it’s not all that clear, but thats due to the bill being written so vaguely.

The way it is drafted strongly suggests that the reproduction and caching activity done by Google or the Wayback Machine at archive.org and similar essential research tools would be illegal in Canada.  It could be read by a court as a ‘deeming’ provision, which was hopefully not the intention.  “We shouldn’t cripple the Googles of the world by imposing copyright chill on the very basis of their architecture. In fact, they perform a very useful service to copyright owners by enabling easy detection of infringement. The owners should go after the actual infringer, rather than effectively shooting the messenger.

Read More | Globe Technology