Challenging search engines under copyright law: Part 1

The US Court of Appeals on the West Coast (CA 9) recently handed down an opinion (in Kelly v. Amba Soft) broadly condemning as illegal what it termed "framing" and apparently condemning all hyperlinks as well. Kelly sued Arriba Soft for copyright infringement, saying the thumbnails and full-size images were illegal reproductions of the copies of the copyright-protected photos that he had posted on his Web site. Such reproduction violates section 106(1) of the Copyright Act, which prohibits unauthorized reproductions of protected works. The author reviews the case.