Google Opposes Australian Copyright Law: May 'cripple' online searching

ABC (Australia) reports that Google is lobbying Australian lawmakers in opposition to proposed copyright legislation in that nation.

According to the article, Google is concerned that the new law may place constraints on the legal entitlement of search engines to maintain cached copies of copyright-protected materials.

These cached page "snapshots" are collected and maintained by Google and other search engines for indexing and search retrieval purposes:

"Plugging a word or phrase into a search engine may soon give you fewer results if proposed new Australian copyright laws are adopted, according to internet giant Google.

The laws could open the way for Australian copyright owners to take action against search engines for caching and archiving material, Google says in a submission to a senate committee considering the legislation.

This could potentially limit the scope of the search engine results, which the internet company describes as effectively 'condemning the Australian public to the pre-internet era."

"Given the vast size of the internet it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached," Google submits."If such advance permission was required, the internet would promptly grind to a halt."

- Garry J. Wise Toronto

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