[wrsh07]

I keep doing a mental trick where I ask, "what if this were a feature of Google/YouTube?"

I think you're allowed 30s clips (or something) while staying within fair use (see: film YouTubers are able to use some scenes and clips)

Thus, you could imagine a Google that would show you the clip of the movie or link to a 30s scene from the movie and then prompted you to rent/buy the movie to see more.

I think Google would get away with that. I'm not positive or a lawyer.

Is this different because it's still images only? Again, Google shows copyrighted images in its image search (usually thumbnails, and then maybe serves the full image from the source? Or sometimes sends you to the source?)

It's not quite clear to me that simply showing the image is copyright infringement - non generative ai companies do that. So where is the line?

My understanding is that it really should be incumbent on the user (like it would be if your search found copyrighted material) but I don't have a legal basis for that! It just seems like nobody is suing Google for image search.