[cinitriqs]

The funny thing is... people refer to google image search as a solution to track down infringers... yet... the fact that those pictures can be found on google image search seems to be overlooked... isn't google infringing by showing us any pictures at all? or are they allowed to make money off of it by showing it in their image search results... Just stating the obvious here... it's not infringement if you are... big brother?

[Argorak]

As always, context is the problem. Google is showing those pictures because they run a search service, which has the goal of passing you off to the orignating site. Also, you _can_ tell Google to not index these images (robots.txt) etc. The thing with search machines is that the laws were rarely written with them in mind.

Also, there are attempts to implement precisely what you are arguing here. In Germany, there is the Leistungsschutzrecht for Text, which says that you have to pay for excerpts like Google creates them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancillary_copyright_for_press_p...

They are usually a horrible mess.