If DuggMirror is Breaking the Law, So Is Google…

The recent front page story regarding the legality of DuggMirror shows a general lack of knowledge regarding internet laws and their current conception. At issue here is whether DuggMirror is violating fair use laws because it provides advertisements on pages that are duplicating the content of the actual owners. In the real world, we would all say that this is definitely copyright infringement. Hold on, not so fast.

The DMCA has offered exclusions which, while originally intended to target caching by internet service providers, have protected the ability for sites to cache other sites without asking for expressed permission (Section 512B). Google’s caching service has qualified for this safe harbor before, and it likely that duggMirror would accept the same fate.

If Google is innocent, so is duggMirror.

There are some very interesting questions that arise from this, however. Can we all just become a “caching” service if we like. Are scraper sites that steal your content and reproduce it verbatim protected as well?

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