Judge Rejects Google's DMCA Attempt to Stop Web Scraping
Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped
A judge dismissed Google's lawsuit against SerpAPI, ruling that the company cannot use the DMCA to block scraping of its search results. The court found that Google's SearchGuard measure does not effectively protect copyrighted works, as search results often contain no copyrightable content. This decision challenges the trend of using anti-circumvention laws to restrict access to the open web for AI and data companies.
To the extent that Google Search results do not contain any copyrighted content, SearchGuard cannot be said to effectively control access to a work protected under the Copyright Act.