Legal: Crawling & Indexing
Getting Better, But Google Still Has Work On Piracy: The Game Of Thrones Story
The search engine scores exceptionally well fighting piracy on generic searches for the popular TV series. But for the piracy-prone searches...
Defamatory Threats To Have Chilling Effect On Link Builders?
Recently, Google reached a settlement with a UK businessman who took it to court over defamatory web content. Columnist Eric Ward discusses the...
To Avoid Liability, Google Limits German News Content To Headlines
German news and magazine publishers are determined, one way or another, to get Google to pay them for their content. They’re not upset...
Ripoff Report Is Back In Yahoo Australia’s Search Results, But Not Completely
After what we think was about a week of being de-indexed, the controversial Ripoff Report website is showing up again in search results on...
Yahoo7 Australia Drops Ripoff Report From Search Results After Defamation Complaints
Yahoo7, the Australian version of Yahoo, has de-indexed Ripoff Report after receiving “significant complaints” about defamatory...
Tweet Showing How Google Itself Is A “Scraper Site” Goes Massively Viral
Perhaps it’s SEO’s “Oreo moment,” a tweet relating to search engine optimization that’s gained nearly as much...
Court Finds Google’s Book Scanning Is Fair Use: Highlights From The Ruling
Nearly ten years after it began and eight years after Google was sued over it, Google’s program that scans books in order to make them...
Governments Across The Globe Are Making More Requests To Remove Content From Google Services
According to a new Transparency Report released today, Google received 4,096 government requests to remove 42,249 pieces of content during 2012....
The Dark Side Of The Internet: A Search Engine That Finds Unsecured Routers, Servers & A Whole Lot More
Developed by John Matherly, Shodan is a search engine designed to help users find certain pieces of software, determine which applications are...
Google Avoids Link Tax But Vague “Ancillary Copyright” Law Sets Up Future Legal Battle
In August of last year, a number of German lawmakers were pressing proposed “ancillary copyright” legislation that would have...
New German Law Will Allow Free “Snippets” By Search Engines, But Uncertainty Remains
The good news for search engines like Google is a proposed German copyright law won’t require them to pay to show short summaries of news...
German Parliament Hears Experts On Proposed Law To Limit Search Engines From Using News Content
Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee of the German Bundestag — Germany’s national parliament — held an expert hearing on a...
Banned Holiday Deal Sites Return To Bing
Holiday deal sites that Bing banned from its search listings just before the busy shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have now been...
Bing Bans Holiday Deals Sites, Including One By Group That Created Cyber Monday
Ironically, the trade group that created the Cyber Monday concept had its own CyberMonday.com site lost in cyberspace this week. Lost, that is,...
Proposed UK Law Would Immunize Search Engines Against Copyright Claims
There’s been enormous debate in the US over the years about whether Google and other search engines violate copyright laws by indexing...
Head-To-Head: ACAP Versus Robots.txt For Controlling Search Engines
In the battle between search engines and some mainstream news publishers, ACAP has been lurking for several years. ACAP — the Automated...
NAR Changes Its Mind: Google Is Not A Scraper Site
Backtracking on a controversial decision earlier this year, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) has adopted a new policy that allows...
Twitter Not Giving Access To Private Tweets
Is Twitter allowing search engines access to protected tweets or not? Not, Twitter tells me, though the company probably needs to do a bit more...
Yahoo Wins In Lawsuit Over Search Descriptions
Eric Goldman updated us on a case where Yahoo was sued for showing spam and porn pages for a search on a person’s name. Beverly Stayart...
US Justice Dept. Formally Confirms Google Books Inquiry
It’s not really a surprise or even news that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed yesterday it was formally investigating the...