RSS Demand: Perfect 10 & Google.

[lucia]

In his first post at ELI, mikedrag, and even newer newbie than I am wrote

I have a site where I legally (with permission) take RSS news feed from another site and displays it. Images from RSS feed are pooled from source site (never copied to my servers). I have recently received Getty Images letter demanding settlement for 3 images they found on my site.
RSS news feed is updated automatically. I don't have any way to check every single news article.(it would be worthless as time consuming)
Do I break any copyright rules doing it this way?
On the other hand at the time when Getty images sent the letter my site was shot down already for a month due to other technical issues.
Do they really have a case against me?

Two of use responded, citing http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1327768.html
(For details see: http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/getty-images-letter-forum/images-from-rss-getty-images-letter/)

It occurred to me that I might want to explain why if Getty drags mikedrag to court, with only a little publicity, Google might very well turn up with an amicus brief. 

Let's look at who other than mikedrag "displays" images picked up from RSS feeds. See this:

If you examine the address bar, you can see that's a snapshot of the page that is displayed by Google.  Does Google own the copyright to the image of that cute kitty? Nope.  Does Google host that entirely full sized image of the adorable sleeping cat on its server? Nope.

Google is doing precisely what mikedrag does.

They are running the feed from a blog that publishes an RSS feed.  The person who publishes that blog and also the feed  could refuse to publish that feed. That person could publish a partial feed. They could block display of images.  Do you know how I know for a fact google is hotlinking -- not hosting on their server-- and that the person running that blog could block display of the images. Here's why:


Because I just blocked them. 

Now I need to see what havoc I wrecked. I happen to be blocking at the cloud. I could equally well block using .htaccess. But everyone can always block images. It just so happens I'd rather let people see these at google, so I'm going to go undo that.  (Or try to undo it while still banning certain particular people from viewing images. )