Court Says Google Cache Is Fair Use

With all the controversy over Google's Library scanning project, one of the more interesting questions is if courts find the project to be infringement, it also probably means that the rest of Google is infringing -- as conceptually it's the same thing. Rather than books, Google is simply scanning websites and storing the index on its own machines -- and also offering up the cache for display. Apparently one guy got so upset about this that he sued over Google's cache. However, a district court has granted summary judgment in favor of Google, saying that the cache is fair use and that the since the guy took no action to remove his content from Google's cache, it was an implied license for Google to scan and keep the content in its cache. This is just one case in one district court, but the ruling should still be useful in defending the Google Library project as well.