by KATHARINE JARMUL

The Google News Web site makes news searching easier for readers and reports alike, but copyright infringement lawsuits continue to challenge the legality of its services.

Google’s news site allows users to search news content collected by Google search engines according to relevance and timeliness. Displaying the top news in a variety of sections, Google News displays a cluster of headlines and photographs relating to each story, often giving the reader only a headline and date for each article.

“A lot of people will say that Google is taking money away from newspapers — but Google isn’t taking money away by using news,” said David Johnson, chief technology officer at Scripps Media Center. “Google is just a referring site. It pulls traffic in and then it puts it out.”

Unlike Yahoo!’s news Web site, Google does not create or display entire articles. Much like its search engine, Google’s news site simply aggregates headlines, photos and the first portion of text relating to the top stories. Often, Google News features more than one headline for each story — giving the user the option to read about the topic from a variety of sources. Unlike Google, Yahoo! subscribes to news content and aggregates the content at one site. Google’s site simply refers users to content that is located elsewhere. This main difference changes the way each company handles copyright and sourcing.

Photo provided by Gabriel Stricker.
Gabriel Stricker is a spokesperson for Google.

U.S. copyright law says reprinting a copyrighted piece of work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” In determining whether copyright has been violated, the court can review the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, the portion of the work and the effect of the work’s reference on the market value. This final case is important in relation to Google’s news service. If users can see photos, for example, on Google’s page for free, the photo becomes less profitable for the photographer who would like to sell it to publications.

“I think there’s a serious question of copyright infringement,” said media attorney Alice Neff Lucan. Lucan, who worked as assistant general counsel at Gannett before starting her own practice in Washington, D.C., said Google displays headlines and photos without permission. “Google’s position is that this is too short to be a copyright violation … but the publications have a different view.”

Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said Google News doesn’t violate copyright laws because “it simply links users to the site at which the news story appears.”

In the past two years, Google has settled two separate cases involving copyright infringement. In the first case, Google settled with The Associated Press and agreed to a payment deal in order to access the wire’s stories and photos, according to the Financial Times. In April 2007, the second case was settled with Agence France Presse. The terms of each agreement were not made public.

“AFP [Agence France Presse] has voluntarily withdrawn the lawsuit,” Stricker said. “AFP headlines and photographs are referenced in Google News and other Google services, which drives valuable traffic to Web sites on which AFP news content is shown.” He also said Google and Agence France Presse have reached a licensing agreement.

Photo provided by Reuters.
Google has settled two lawsuits regarding copyright violations.
The company faces numerous lawsuits for other services, including a service that allows users to
search published books online.

Newspapers have always aggregated content from other sources. However, these papers have used licensing agreements to pay for these stories. Since the Internet’s explosion on the news market in 1995, search engines and home pages have been the most prominent news aggregators — taking the profits along with them.

Photo provided by David Johnson.
David Johnson is chief technology officer for Scripps Howard News Service.
He is also a professor at American University’s School of Communication.

Johnson said newspapers missed the boat when news aggregation first came to the Web.

“They didn’t see themselves as a service-related provider. They saw themselves as a content provider, and it didn’t work,” he said. “Now with Google Ads…they’re making only 25 percent off the content.”

Still, according to recent Editor & Publisher article, online news sites are receiving heavy traffic for extended periods of time. The report shows NYTimes.com led the online newspaper industry in October, with more than 17 million unique visits and an average of more than 30 minutes spent on the site.

“People are spending more time reading newspapers online,” Johnson said. “There’s a dedicated audience.” Johnson said it’s just a matter of who is making the profit from the dedicated online news consumer.

Google News acts more like an editor than a reporter — sorting and aggregating the top headlines. News aggregation bloggers, such as the , perform similar functions. By choosing the top stories and syndicating content, these Web sites rely on reporters and content from the papers, but make the news decisions themselves, replacing the editor in the news process.

Photo provided by Gabriel Stricker.
Google News Web site aggregates news content from across the Web.

“Google News is one of the world’s first services of its kind generated by computers by harnessing the editorial judgment of the Web,” Stickler said. He said Google News gives users the ability to “read multiple viewpoints on any given news event” and “find the information they need quickly and easily.” He also said Google has received numerous compliments from journalists whose stories have been displayed prominently.

“[Google] created a software program that does the editor’s job,” Johnson said. “You can automate that to a degree, but you lose that human judgment.”

Johnson said Google hires software developers, while Web sites like Yahoo! hire editors and journalists. Google relies on coding and algorithms to make the editorial decisions.

According to Johnson, users and reporters need to ask, “Is that [process] too machine-oriented or is that more objective?”