Copyright in collision with Search?

[Nicholas]

Fred von Lohmann has an article [1] on the EFF Deep Links site where he
discusses a recient lawsuit filed against the operators of TorrentSpy
and he starts with:-

"A prediction: the world of copyright law is about to collide with the
world of digital indexing and search, and the collision will be among
the most important digital copyright issues of the next several years."

The suit claims contributory infringement, inducement, and vicarious
liability against TorrentSpy for maintaining an index of "dot torrents"
and TorrentSpy says in defense, "how is TorrentSpy different from
Google? After all, Google indexes dot torrent files, too (just include
"filetype:torrent" in your search string)."

It is time Google tackled the copyright issue and helped institute a
new regime better suited to a digitally networked world [2].

[1] http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004518.php
[2] http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=133