Parker, who
represented himself in the suit, publishes online under the name
“Snodgrass Publishing Group”. One of his publications was an e-book
entitled “29 Reasons Not To Be A Nice Guy” and at some time he
posted Reason 6 from this book onto a Usenet forum, the worldwide
network of discussion groups.
In August 2004 he filed a lawsuit, alleging that when Google
robots had automatically scanned and archived the posting in a
cache, the search engine had breached his copyright in the
material. Google had also directly infringed his copyright by
including excerpts of the text in search results, he said.
Judge R Barclay Surrick of the US District Court for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania did not agree.
“It is clear that Google’s automatic archiving of Usenet
postings and excerpting of websites in its results to users’ search
queries do not include the necessary volitional element to
constitute direct copyright infringement,” he wrote.
Nor did he accept that the automatic caching of material
amounted to infringement, following a January ruling by the Navada
District Court on this very point.
There was no contributory copyright infringement either, said
Judge Surrick. Parker had claimed that Google was in breach because
it allowed others to view infringed content, but had not provided
evidence – particularly in relation to Google’s knowledge of the
supposedly infringing activity – to support this claim.
Parker also alleged that Google was guilty of defamation because
it archived defamatory comments made about the writer in other
Usenet postings and websites.
But Judge Surrick dismissed the claim, advising that Google was
immune from prosecution in respect of third party postings by
virtue of a provision in the Communications Decency Act. This
generally grants immunity from suit to those who provide material
on the internet that was written by others.
The Communications Decency Act also protected Google against
Parker’s claims in respect of invasion of privacy and negligence,
wrote the Judge. He then dismissed other claims in respect of
alleged racketeering and civil conspiracy on the grounds that they
were “completely incomprehensible”.
Parker is planning to appeal, according to reports.
