Google Presses DMCA Scraping Fight After 1 Court Loss, Citing Billions of Bot Searches
Updated
Updated · Ars Technica · Jul 27
Google Presses DMCA Scraping Fight After 1 Court Loss, Citing Billions of Bot Searches
3 articles · Updated · Ars Technica · Jul 27
Summary
Google said it will keep pursuing AI scrapers after losing in court last week, maintaining that SerpApi unlawfully bypassed protections on Google Search results.
A December lawsuit argues SerpApi circumvented anti-scraping technology and sold an unauthorized Google Search API, undermining Google's ability to monetize or offset the cost of billions of bot queries.
Google says those protections also shield copyrighted material embedded in results, including licensed content used in knowledge panels, and help preserve relationships with rights holders.
Reddit filed a similar suit in October against SerpApi and Perplexity, and Google cited that case as support for using the DMCA against scraping that standard copyright law may not clearly cover.
Public Knowledge's Meredith Rose called the DMCA theory bizarre but unsurprising, saying platforms facing 3 years of surging AI scraping are reaching for legal tools that can quickly force licensing talks.