Remember when the RIAA sued college students for creating campus-wide search engines? And remember how various wags observed that there was no real technical distinction between the search engines those students wrote and the search engines supplied by major companies? Well, the other shoe has dropped.
In a complaint (anyone mirrored it? post a link!) filed today in California federal court, the RIAA has accused Google of vicarious and contributory copyright infringement, plus -- get this -- trademark dilution! There's apparently attached to the complaint a 10-page 4-column 8-point list of specific infringing audio and (music?) video files locatable through Google searches, plus a recitation of "tens of thousands" of files accessible through bitTorrent sites reachable by searching for "torrents." They don't appear to have sued any of these sites, or anyone associated with bitTorrent, or if they have, the press release doesn't mention it. My guess is that they figure they have a strong enough case against Google, and it has deeper pockets.
I don't buy it: can you say "substantial noninfringing uses?" Then again, I've thought that before; hell, I even thought it about Napster, fer crying out loud. Maybe more to the point, I cannot possibly see a judge being willing to shut down Google. The only way I can figure it is that the RIAA is gambling on getting a trial judge who doesn't know how to use email, or one of those famously wacky Ninth Circuit panels.
I'm also having trouble wrapping my head around the trademark theory. From the article, it seems to be something to do with Google deceptively associating various trademarks with bad rips and junk files. As if we didn't all know who was responsible for seeding the Net with poisoned MP3s in the first place. Still, when you're up against Matt "the Dentist" Oppenheim, I guess he'll use anything as a drill, and the blunter the better.
You realize, of course, that there's no stopping here. I mean, even if we try to contemplate a Google-free Net, or a Net in which every search engine has been crippled not to return any hits on search terms that contain words in the name of an album or artist, that's just scratching the surface. If the R-I-Double-Evil wins here, they could basically turn off HTTP, or the backbone routers, or pretty much anyone else who doesn't pay their protection, excuse me, their settlement money. And you know what else?
Happy April 1.