Google Launches 'Newsstand' Android Reading App

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Mix Google Play magazine store with the two-year-old Currents magazine app, stir gently, and you get Google's Newsstand Android reading app that supports publications' paywalls, the Gigaom.com Web site reported.

The Google app launch will offer more than 1,900 free and subscription-based content sources, including paywall publications The New York Times, Financial Times and Wall St. Journal, according to the Gigaom.com post. Present Currents and Google magazine users will have to upgrade their apps to benefit from Newsstand.

The move is intended seriously to challenge Apple's mobile magazine and newspaper store, Gigaom.com reported.

UPDATE: Google Library Triumphs; Judge Throws the Book at The Authors Guild

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Citing the "significant public benefits" Google Books' Library Project provides, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin today ended an eight-year battle and dismissed the copyright infringement suit brought by The Authors Guild against Google, Inc.

The case, The Authors Guild et al. v. Google Inc. (Case No. 1:05-cv-08136) was brought by The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, alleging the search engine colossus' ambitious project of uploading the collections of the Library of Congress, New York Public Library and several university libraries violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act [Pub. Law 105-304]. Google, which already has scanned more than 20 million books, countered that their actions were protected by the fair use doctrine.

Judge Chin, while conceding Google had not obtained permission from copyright holders before scanning their works, noted the project's value to scholars, the increased access to readers and the enhanced revenue opportunities for authors and publishers as among the benefits Google Books provided that warranted fair use protection. The book scanning process, Judge Chin ruled, was transformational.

The epic struggle between the two sides has been chronicled in this blog (see "TUOL" posts 7/2/13, 11/16/12, 9/19/12 & 2/19/10) and most recently, included the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversing the trial court last summer by holding the plaintiffs were not entitled to class action status.

According to accounts in the Wall St. Journal Law Blog and THR, Esq. blog, The Authors Guild plans to appeal Judge Chin's decision.

You (Auto)Complete Me: Google Runs Afoul of German Court

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Search engine colossus Google has once again run afoul of a court because of its "Suggestion" or algorithmic autocomplete function.

Germany's Federal Court of Justice in Karisruhe this week ruled that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is obligated to remove defamatory autocomplete content once it is notified, according to a post by the Jurist Web site (www.jurist.org). The founder of a company that produces nutritional supplements alleged he was defamed because when his or his company's name was entered in a search in Google's German-language site, suggested links to fraud and  the controversial religion Scientology were part of the autocomplete results.

The Federal Court said search engine operators needn't routinely verify that autocomplete search results are error-free, but once apprised that suggested results unlawfully violate an individual's rights, the operators are legally bound to remove the offending material.

As chronicled by this blog, Google has previously been taken to task for autocomplete mishaps, including a Japanese court that ordered Google to pay $3,000 to a person who was wrongly linked to a crime he didn't commit (see "TUOL" post 4/17/13) and by a French court that assessed  $6,000 in attorneys' fees against Google when the suggestions of rapist and Satanist were associated with the entry of an unidentified plaintiff's name in a search (see "TUOL" post 9/27/10).

The staff of "TUOL" in its brush with high school math learned long ago that nothing good can come from an algorithm.

A Yen for Autocomplete: Google Ordered to Pay Japanese Libel Plaintiff

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Multinational Internet services giant Google, Inc. has been ordered to pay a Tokyo plaintiff 300,000 yen ($3,057) in damages arising from his defamation and invasion of privacy claims, Agence France Presse ("AFP") and Cnet.com reported this week.

The culprit, according to the plaintiff's suit, is the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google's autocomplete function, which he alleged would link him to crimes he did not commit when Google users would begin typing his name in a search. The plaintiff, who was not identified, alleged he lost his job and has been unable to obtain employment since because of the negative autocomplete output.

Although Judge Hisaki Kobayashi did not conclude Google's autocomplete was to blame for the plaintiff losing his job, the judge did find a "situation has been created by which illegally submitted documents can easily be viewed."

It's doubtful whether Google will have to face the music because, as the AFP article noted, Google has no Japan-based data center, as it does in Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, so the Japanese Court's ability to exert influence is in doubt. For its part, Google argues autocomplete results are automatically generated and beyond its control.

The suggest function, which offers options when search terms are entered, has previously gotten Google into trouble in defamation cases in France (see "TUOL" post 9/27/10).

Google & AGs Hash Out Street View Privacy Settlement

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Pending court approval, Google, Inc., has settled the Street View-inspired invasion of privacy case brought by the Attorneys General of 38 states.

According to reports in The New York Times and Wall St. Journal, the San Francisco-based social platform colossus will pay a $7 million fine for its street map project transgressions, in which Google vehicles equipped with antennas and software captured private network id data, including passwords and email, payload data and data frames from unencrypted wireless networks of residences and businesses.

Besides the $7 million penalty, which the company is likely to earn back in the time it takes "TUOL" to complete this post, under the proposed settlement, Google must promote a nationwide campaign to inform consumers about how to protect personal data and secure wireless networks, educate its employees concerning user data confidentiality, observe protocols to protect Street View data collected from 2008 to 2010, produce a YouTube video informing viewers how to encrypt wireless network data that it must promote in daily ads for two years and take out educational ads in the largest newspapers in the 38 affected states. The company must, within six months of the settlement, implement an internal privacy program.

Google's "rap sheet" continues to grow. Last year, the company was fined $22.5 million by the FTC for circumventing the Safari browser's privacy settings (see "TUOL" post 2/21/12), and paid the FCC $25,000 for obstructing the agency's investigation of the Street View data grab. In 2011, Google agreed to be audited for a 20-year period by the FTC after admitting employing deceptive tactics when it launched the Buzz social network. Looming large as the next privacy battleground is Google Glass, computer eyewear that potentially could eavesdrop on individuals' private interactions. Hard to say whether the 15-year-old Google is just displaying adolescent rambunctiousness or full-blown juvenile delinquency.

Led by then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the multi-state probe of Street View began in June 2010 (see "TUOL" post 10/16/10).

EU & U.S. Social Media Cos. Clash Over Personal Data Use

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Facebook and Google are fighting efforts by the European Union to restrict social media companies' efforts to sell users' personal data to advertising companies, according to a report by Reuters news service.

The growth of mining Internet users' data, such as browsing habits, by social media platforms, including Facebook and Google, has grown exponentially. The Reuters article estimates that Facebook could reap $10 annually from each user's clicking on ads, not exactly small change for a company that boasts 1 billion users.

EU lawmakers, concerned that its citizens have not given permission to have their personal data used in such a manner, are lining up behind European Parliament Member Jan Philipp Albrecht, who produced a report based on the European Commission last year calling for stricter data protection. Albrecht is expected to reveal his plan this week and the EU will vote on his final report in April, Reuters reported.

The plan may include provisions enabling authorities to levy fines against customer data violaters.

UPDATE: Italian Appeals Court Lets Google Execs Off the Hook

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An Italian appeals court last week reversed the February 2010, convictions of three Google executives regarding a video on a Google site depicting a Down syndrome child being verbally and physically abused, the Associated Press reports.

Google CFO George Reyes, Senior Veep David Drummond and Chief Privacy Officer Peter Fleischer originally received six-month jail sentences for violating Italy's privacy laws based on the 2006 video. (See "TUOL" post 2/25/10).  The executives were never incarcerated because as first-time offenders, Italian law commutes short-term sentences.

When notified by authorities of the incident, Google removed the offending video within two hours, according to the AP article.

UPDATE: Google Tries to Knock Out Digital Library Class Action Suit

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Insisting that scanning 20 million books to create the world's largest digital library constitutes a fair use, Google, Inc., last week filed a motion in a New York federal court to dismiss a class action copyright infringement suit, Paid Content (www.paidcontent.org) reports.

The seven-year-old case, The Authors Guild, Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. (Case No. 12-3200) (see "TUOL" posts 9/19/12, 2/19/10) involves a claim by the 8,500-member Guild that Google violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act [Pub. Law 105-304] by infringing on authors' works.  In its latest motion, Google argues that digital scanning is a transformative use of the copyrighted works and not an infringement. The search engine giant also contends that the authors should not be allowed to sue collectively as a class because many of them allegedly favor the digital scanning.

The Authors Guild wants $750 per book from Google, but Google maintains the scanned versions don't compete with the hand-held existing versions of the books at issue and do not diminish the value of the existing books.

Newspapers in Brazil: 'Nuts' to Google News

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In an unprecedented action by a newspaper association against search engine leviathan Google, the National Association of Newspapers in Brazil ("ANJ") has urged its 154 member papers that comprise 90 percent of the country's newspaper circulation to abandon Google News.

As reported by the Journalism in the Americas blog of the Knight Center for Journalism in America (knightcenter@utexas.edu), a heated debate at the Inter American Press Assn.'s 68th General Assembly earlier this month in Sao Paulo sparked the ANJ action over Google's continued refusal to compensate papers for use of their headlines. In December 2010, ANJ and the search engine giant agreed that Google would just display the headline and one line from stories that would link to the Brazilian newspapers.

Google argues that Google News channels more than 1 billion clicks to news sites globally to the sites' benefit. News sites, however, consider Google a direct competitor. Serasa Experian, a Brazilian digital marketing firm, reports Google has more than a 92 percent market share among search engines in Brazil.

Google & France at an Impasse

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A move to require Internet search engines to pay media sites for displaying links to their content has Google threatening to bypass France's media sites from its search results, Agence France-Presse reports.

Boasting that it directs more than 4 billion clicks to French media Internet sites, Google argued that its own survival would be imperiled by having to pay for content. But Aurelie Filippetti, France's Culture Minister, is among a chorus of government officials who back legislation requiring search engines to pony up for content.

Taxing online advertising revenues was rejected by French lawmakers last year.

Virtual Lobbying

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The nation's capital isn't wanting for lobbyists, but add the Washington, D.C.-based The Internet Association to the list of lobbying groups looking to influence Congress on issues ranging from online security to privacy.

Bloomberg News this week reported that Michael Beckerman will serve as the IA's CEO and president. Group members include Google, Facebook, AOL, Zynga, EBay, Expedia, Monster, LinkedIn and Trip Advisor.  Economic growth in the ether will be one of the organization's principal goals.

UPDATE: Time Out in Google Digital Library Copyright Suit

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Associated Press reports that United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Judge Raymond J. Lohier, Jr. has ordered a stay of the The Authors Guild copyright infringement lawsuit against Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, Inc., pending Google's appeal of The Authors Guild being granted class status.

In its epic struggle against Google's efforts to amass the world's largest digital library (a purported 20 million books already have been scanned), The Authors Guild, a nonprofit New York-based 8,500-member strong industry group, contends Google is infringing on copyrights pursuant to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act [Pub. L. 105-304], which amended the Copyright Act of 1976 [17 U.S.C. sec. 1 et seq.], and its actions are not protected by the Act's Fair Use exception.  Google disputes that it is noncompliant with copyright laws.

Judge Denny Chin, who presently serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and has presided over the seven-year-old case, granted class status last May and denied Google's motion to stay the litigation pending its appeal of his ruling.

When Google Pulls into Germany, German Consumers 'Putsch' Back

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The Federation of German Consumer Organizations ("FGCO") has threatened to sue Internet giant Google on September 4, unless the Mountain View, California-based company stops dispensing users' personal data without their consent, the India Times reports.

The FGCO issued a cease and desist letter to Google, which it claims automatically shares users' information with third-party applications without obtaining the users' explicit permission, according to the Times article. Google has run afoul of Germany's strict privacy laws before, as the German government previously compelled Google to offer its citizens the right to opt out of the company's Street View mapping program (see "TUOL" post 10/22/10).

Travel Gets Googlized

Image via CrunchBaseThe Wall St. Journal reported today that Frommer, a cadillac brand of travel guides, is being unloaded by publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. to Google, Inc., the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine and owner of much of the universe, for an undisclosed sum.

Google has yet to determine whether to make Frommer an online-only presence or to continue to publish print versions of the travel guide, according to the Journal article.  Also under consideration is blending Frommer in with restaurant review maven Zagat Survey, LLC, which Google purchased in September 2011.

YouTube With a Dash of 'Woodstein'?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)Google-owned YouTube will collaborate with the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) to launch the I Files channel that will air investigative news videos, Ndtv.com reports.

CIR will edit the videos that will be produced by worldwide contributors ranging from the New York Times and the BBC to Al Jazeera. The channel also will be an outlet for independent reporters and producers.

 YouTube is the platform for the I Files channel that is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. According to the Ndtv.com article, the channel already has 10 videos in the pipeline.

Google Feeling Down Under

Melbourne Federal Court Building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Internet search monster Google was taken to the woodshed yesterday by the Australian Federal Court, which sided with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ("ACCC") position that Google deceived consumers by interspersing paid advertisements in search results.

According to a Reuters story, between March 2006, and July 2007, Google users who queried Honda Australia received responses that included paid ads from Honda rival CarSales that purportedly indicated a link between Honda Australia and CarSales. Publishing the paid ads was "misleading and deceptive," said  the Court's three-judge panel, chastising Google.

The Court assessed court costs against Google and ordered the company to institute a compliance program to guard against paid advertisements misleading users. It's unclear what Google's next step will be following the adverse ruling by the Australian court, which wouldn't happen in the U.S. where 47 U.S.C. sec. 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shields ISPs such as Google from liability for content from other Internet service providers.

Censorship on the Menu at New Delhi Trial of Facebook and Google

Image via WikipediaFreedom of expression lovers have turned their attention to New Delhi's Patiala House where social media leviathans Facebook and Google went on trial Tuesday for failing to remove objectionable content from their sites.

As reported by The Wall St. Journal and Bloomberg News, an adverse ruling in the high stakes proceedings could impose heavy fines on Facebook and Google and subject executives of the social media companies to jail terms. Microsoft Corp. is also a defendant, but the focus thus far is on Google and Facebook as the repositories of the purportedly offensive content.

Indian journalist Vinay Rai initiated the criminal complaint, alleging the defendants display content that "seeks to create enmity, hatred and communal violence," according to the Journal article. Facebook and Google believe India's information technology law shields them from liability, but Delhi's High Court is not expected to address the defendants' efforts to dismiss the case against them before May. Unlike China, India has not blocked Web sites, but censorship suits are not a rarity, but are a hindrance to social media companies' business operations.

According to reports, fewer than 10 percent of India's 1.2 billion citizens are online. Facebook monthly users in India total roughly 46 million, while Google estimates reaching 300 million Web users in India by 2014. Bloomberg reports that Google has taken down most of the material about which Rai complained.

Facebook and Google previously pulled  purportedly religiously offensive content from their sites that upset Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasm (see "TUOL" post 2/7/12).

Internet Defendants Dodge Liability in 'Sex Toy' Defamation Case

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In Kanal V. Gaston v. Facebook, Inc., Maria Raquel Rivas et al. (Case No. 3:12-cv-0063), the United States District Court for the District of Oregon last week tossed defamation claims against Facebook, Google and Lexis-Nexis arising from the plaintiff's dispute against the mother of his child and his former employer that involves a missing sex toy.

Now that we have your attention, the litigious, unemployed, asset-free Gaston  filed multiple lawsuits principally targeting Rivas, a former coworker at Stamford Financial Group with whom he had a child, and the Harris County (Texas) District Attorney's Office, for whom he worked from 2007-2011. He alleged he was sexually harassed by the DA's office during an office party and that his ex-employer burglarized his vehicle and threatened him, all over his refusal to return a sex toy that is not further identified in the complaint.  Gaston further claimed that Rivas threatened to release a newspaper article and personal information about him that would depict him as "crazy and a trouble maker."

What does all this have to do with social media giant Facebook, A-list Internet search engine Google, and computer-assisted legal research maven Lexis-Nexis, readers may wonder? Well, Gaston alleges Facebook gave Rivas access to spread purported lies about him on the Internet, while Google and Lexis-Nexis purportedly conspired with Rivas and the DA's office to retaliate against him by publishing allegedly defamatory statements, that's what ("TUOL" isn't fooled, and knows readers haven't gotten past the missing sex toy to contemplate the legal ramifications of the case).

In mercifully allowing the Internet defendants out of the case, the district court cited Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA") that shields Internet Service Providers from liability arising from content created by third parties. The court held that Google, Lexis-Nexis and Facebook are all Internet Service Providers, as defined  by CDA Sec.230(f)(2) as: "any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions." 

The decision marks the first time Lexis-Nexis has benefited from the immunity offered by CDA Sec. 230(c), noted the always informative Eric Goldman Technology & Marketing Law Blog. It appears Gaston won't be tapping any social media deep pockets for dough (dill or otherwise).

Google's Safari Hijinks Prompts Congressmen to Seek FTC Inquiry

Image via WikipediaFederal Trade Commission Chair Jon Leibowitz last Friday received a letter from Congressmen Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) urging the agency to probe whether social media giant Google has engaged in "unlawful privacy practices" by using source code chicanery to bypass Web browser Safari's privacy settings, Jurist (www.jurist.org) reports.

Responding to a Feb. 17 article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Representatives, who serve in the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, queried the FTC concerning whether Google's actions that enabled it to track Safari users without their consent ran afoul of a 2011 settlement agreement between the FTC and Google occasioned by the social network Google Buzz's breach of privacy rights during its launch. The accord prohibits Google from misrepresenting its privacy policies to users and requires user consent before the sharing of personal information with third parties.

According to the Journal article, Google employed special computer code that deceived Safari, Apple's Web browsing software, into allowing Google to monitor Safari users, neutralizing Safari's default settings that block user tracking. The Journal article claims Google disabled the code soon after the Journal contacted the social media company for the article.

Google is set to implement its new privacy policy March 1. The company was targeted earlier this month in a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by the Electronic Privacy Information Center against the FTC (Case No. 1:2012-cv-00206). The suit, filed under the Administrative Procedure Act [5 U.S.C. sec. 706(1)] seeks injunctive relief that would compel the FTC to enforce the consent order of October 13, 2011, in In the Matter of Google, Inc. (FTC File No. 1023136).

Google is also under fire from the European Union, which this month sent a letter to Google urging it to delay implementing its new privacy policy until the EU fully investigates it.

Readers taken aback by Google's behavior in this matter are well-advised to heed comedian Bill Maher's reminder that it's no accident that within the name Google is the word ogle.

India Givers: Google & Facebook Accede to New Delhi Court Order to Censor Content

Image via WikipediaFacebook and Google pulled controversial content  from domain Websites in India in response to a warning from a New Delhi court hearing a civil case brought by an Islamic scholar who claims the material is religiously offensive.

The Reuters news service reports the social media giants Monday removed the information after the New Delhi lower court gave them 15 days in which to submit in writing to the court actions taken to block offensive content. Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasm, who operates the Website fatwaonline.org, initiated the action against Facebook and Google.

Although only roughly 10 percent of the country's population enjoys Internet use, the Indian government generally has not censored Web access. India, however, passed a law last year requiring companies to remove complained-about content from their Websites within 36 hours.