Considering my recent interest in the boundaries and definition of fair use with respect to caching, I wanted to comment on the decision today to overturn the prior decision in the Google V. Perfect 10 case. The courts decided today that Google’s caching of Perfect 10′s images in thumbnail form is legal under fair use.

This piece of the judge’s findings summarizes the outcome nicely:

Google has put Perfect 10’s thumbnail images (along with millions of other thumbnail images) to a use fundamentally different than the use intended by Perfect 10. In doing so, Google has provided a significant benefit to the public.

It’s interesting that an important aspect of fair use is a “fundamentally different use” than intended by the copyright owner. So, if I want to index all the music on the internet for the purpose of making it searchable, that would be fundamentally different than the use intented by the major label content owners, which is to sell the music for consumption.

Also, an important aspect of the ruling is the “significant benefit to the public” that Google provides in their fair use. So, again using my music on the internet example, if I opened my index of searchable music to the public, there would be an obvious public benefit because my index would aid discovery in ways that are not currently available.

I’m sure there’s a fallacy in my logic because I am trying to apply the law from one medium to another medium… but as I argued before: “It seems silly to set up two different standards based on the contents of packets. Packets are packets. Beyond its copyright status, it shouldn’t matter what’s in a packet for caching to be considered fair use.”

I’m happy about the Google ruling. It’s setting precedent for other different applications of caching/indexing media online.