Searchin'

It hasn’t been a good day for search engines.

Yahoo

ZDNet reports that a number of record companies, including Warner Bros, are suing Yahoo China in Beijing for providing links to infringing music.

"We are surprised and frustrated that they should take this role in China given that they are our partners in other parts of the world," said the IFPI chairman.

The IPKat has sympathy with Yahoo here. It would place a great burden on search engine operators if they were expected to moderate automatically generated search results for links that may infringe copyright.

Google

Meanwhile, just about everybody, including Reuters, is covering the attack by Microsoft’s Associate General Counsel against Google on the issue of copyright:

"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs…Google takes the position that everything may be freely copied unless the copyright owner notifies Google and tells it to stop",

he sniffed.

The IPKat finds this a tough call. Infringing copyright certainly isn’t a good idea, nor is it to be promoted, but Google is making available services that others just don’t offer, or don't offer as well. Even if they rely on the organisation of other peoples’ content, that doesn’t make the services worthless.