Google lobs lawsuit at search result scraping firm SerpApi

Google says the lawsuit is its last resort.

See full article...

 

[Pinkeye]

So, you’re saying that if I do research based on publicly available data, my derived work can’t be copyrighted?

Sites can opt out of Google’s usage.
Google apparently cannot opt out of SerpAPI’s usage.

If you author a derived work you have a copyright on what you wrote. If you quote someone else, they still own the copyright on the quoted text. You have a fair use exemption that allows you to quote them, but you don't take ownership of their work.

Google indexes websites and generates search results. They own copyright on text that is written by their employees, but not on data that they reproduce. So far, the law has held that the product of automated transformations cannot be protected by copyright.

 

[TimeToTilt]

So I feel like this was already decided a while ago that the supreme Court said unless you have users click through an agreement or maybe even have to log in, there's no protection for scraping on the internet. Pretty sure one of the retailers sued Amazon for scraping their prices. And the courts ruled that that was perfectly fair.

 

[Nurep]

Those search results are mine, yours, ours. But certainly not Google's or SerpApi's. Money should go to the people creating the content, the ones who do the actual work. Not the ones indexing it.

 

[Flying Officer Ives]

This thieving cocksucking search/AI monolith is suing company a fraction of its size for doing exactly what it did to come into existence. Amazing.

Missed opportunity to call themselves SerfAPI. Data for us plebs!

/s

 

[giantbee]

Which is?

No, it's nothing to do with witches.

 

[BrerBear]

Google indexes websites and generates search results. They own copyright on text that is written by their employees, but not on data that they reproduce. So far, the law has held that the product of automated transformations cannot be protected by copyright.

Perhaps that’s why the lawsuit focuses on licensed material that SerpAPI is stealing, as well as Google-manufactured data such as their mapping content.

 

[lowededwookie]

Hello Mr Kettle, I'm Mr Pot. You're black.

 

[Mechjaz]

Not to mention, wasn't there something some number of years ago about Google basically stealing content via summaries that reduced traffic to the actual sites with the info? Or am I hallucinating?

this is exactly the thing I thought of - Google has been doing exactly this for years, and increased the theft and redirection from principal sources quadratically by turning those summaries into AI slop.

 

[Fristie Blade]

Pot, meet kettle.
Kettle, meet pot.

 

[mpotter1024]

Such irony Google and all the other AI players trained their AI on unlicensed copyrighted content. Then they charge consumers to use their AI or sell licenses to other companies to reuse it. Nice.

 

[wolfigor]

Even if this wasn't obvious window dressing for their real intentions, I don't see how this would make a difference in court. I don't think you can sue someone for doing something to someone else, especially when that something (disobeying robots.txt) holds no legal weight.

It seems to me putting your content on the open web is making a choice about who can access it: everyone.

If I understood the lawsuit correctly SerpAPI is accused of lifting Google results without authorisation.
They have bots "simulating" users performing searches and then scrape Google's results.
As far as I read from their home page, they provide paid services for that and Google is only one of their targets.

 

[JoHBE]

"The search giant claims it’s not just doing this to protect itself—it’s also about protecting the websites it indexes. In Google’s blog post on the legal action, it says SerpApi “violates the choices of websites and rightsholders about who should have access to their content.”

Once you're worth billions, concepts like "shame" and "principles" cease to exist.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

this is exactly the thing I thought of - Google has been doing exactly this for years, and increased the theft and redirection from principal sources quadratically by turning those summaries into AI slop.

I never get tired of the irony where if Google had stuck to its original business model where it delivered usable and relevant search results and stuck its ads on its front page, it would never have been in hot water, let alone had to be hoist with it's own petard.

But they led the charge of enshittification and are now butthurt that their switch into exploitative behavior inspired copycats.

Welcome to post-capitalism, I guess.

 

[fryhole]

It rarely happens, but both all sides are wrong here.

Google is a content thief, SerpApi is also a content thief. The companies hiring SerpApi for their plagiarism engines are also as guilty as anyone else using hired goons to act for them.

There's a popular Norm MacDonald meme that applies here.

So a situation where Criminal 1 is calling the cops on Criminal 2 for stealing Criminal 1's illegally stolen assets ... stupid criminals - wasn't there a tv show about this once upon a time. /s

 

[cburd]

Oh the irony. I’m so glad I ditched all Alphabet products 5 years ago…thieves hate thieving…

 

[JBinFla]

Isn’t this what they’ve been doing to my websites en mass? I mean how many times do these AI guys need to crawl my site looking for a change? One page a second is about what they’ve been doing for the last year or two.

So why should they be allowed to say “no, stop scraping my site” if we can’t ask them to stop?

 

[JBinFla]

r/leopardsatemyface

 

[42Kodiak42]

It rarely happens, but both all sides are wrong here.

Google is a content thief, SerpApi is also a content thief. The companies hiring SerpApi for their plagiarism engines are also as guilty as anyone else using hired goons to act for them.

There's a popular Norm MacDonald meme that applies here.

I wonder if it's possible for the result of a court case being contingent on the plaintiff being found at fault for their own misdeeds. Or if Google can be found guilty of scraping in their own case against SerpApi. Realistically, though, I think the best case scenario would be that the damages are awarded to the original websites rather than google.

That said, I do find a problem with your likening of SerpApi to hired goons: IP and licensing can happen in a lot of weird ways that people aren't readily aware of, complicating the involvement of customers in a case like this. The biggest red flag that SerpApi's actions might be illegal (prior to this public lawsuit) is that people would expect Google to handle their APIs themselves. This wouldn't put SerpApi's customers in the clear, but their involvement would be a lot messier than simply being accomplices or innocent victims of fraud.

 

[nosmadar2016]

The company should have called themselves "SlurpAI" but they were focused on Stealth Mode.