I knew there was a reason I stayed away from IP law…
<running off to rinse out eyes with saline to stop the watering>
Aw, don’t say that, man.
Your answer in the Constitution Question thread was nothing short of masterly, and I should have said something over there. You don’t know (or maybe you do) what a real pleasure it is to fend one’s way past posters whose keyboards are larger than their brain cells and come to a post by someone who understands the context, the facts, the argument, and the results. Fresh air for the brain.
Walloon has taught me a thing or two on IP, but you could join in anytime and I’d cheer you along too.
From a crashed web site:
In other words, “Sure, we violated your copyright, but if we hadn’t you’d be back to square one.”
I apologise for posting a guess in GQ, but common sense suggests that:
(1) The site doesn’t lose anything since if you have to pay for it it won’t be cached, and they get full credit, and the cache is updated regularly so they don’t look out-of-date.
(2) If you ask Google not to cache they won’t.
(3) So no-one actually minds being cached
(4) And if they do sue, there won’t be any damages.
I expect I’ve missed something, but my WAG would explain the currect situation.
I think you’re right in that in many cases of the Google cache there need not be any damages, hence no incentive to sue. However, in a few cases there may in fact be a reason.
The cache is not always updated, so there may be information there that the owner of the website would not want to be there. Case in point was that website begging for money for a wedding, which was taken down but still available through the cache. In principle the owners might have taken the position that they suffered emotional damage by the continuing availability of that embarrassing site, and tried to sue. I’m not saying that they would stand any change in court, but they would have a reason.
Another thing is that in some cases it could be that the site receives money by number of visitors accessing the website itself. If for some reason people would start to visit the cache instead (because of pop-ups or so), the website would lose income.
OK, you make some good points here. Perhaps eventually caching will be opt-IN, since everyone seems eager to be searched. OTOH, I bet most people would forget to put the search-me metatag there.