image copyrights and search engines
 

Can anyone here go into some detail about how google and other search engines can legally show images found on the web? Isn't that copyright infringement or do thumbnail previews and such constitute fair use? Any fucking lawyers out there?

Read...


http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/...rriba_soft.htm

http://www.hutchlaw.com/downloads/te...02_Techlaw.doc

Hmm according to those articles and documents(thanks btw):

Google could be copyright infringing by showing the image in a frame as they do when you click a thumbnail preview.

The new Yahoo image search is illegal.

Alltheweb's method is thumbnail -> full image (which is legal according to the articles)

Altavista is legal.

VERY interesting yet very disturbing.

I wonder if doing something like width and height in an image tag is similiar to thumbnailing?