Google News being sued for breach of copyright

This has happened before (and is unlikely to succeed, but for anyone interested in the way search engines are gaining the upper hand on this web, this news story will still be of interest – Google News is being sued by AFP for violation of copyrights.

Apparently (writes a well known online journalist Dana Blankenhorn, “the suit is based on the idea that Google makes editorial judgements. Google’s response it it does no such thing.” But his view is that it may be possible to say that Google News “… does make editorial judgements […] Unlike the situation elsewhere at Google, Google News decides which sites are news sites, which sites are not, and sends its robots out to spider the Web accordingly.”