How do image search engines work?

Some search engines had to deal with copyright lawsuits for image thumbnails, and won based on 'fair use.' How does this work outside the U.S.?

• Answer:

  A Paris court decided that a lawsuit against Google France by SAIF (a collective rights management group) had no grounds because administration of http://Google.fr and other similar sites was done in the U.S., (thus Fair Use applied). But in a later case regarding a photo posted without permission, Google's thumbnails were found to be in infringement. The UK and other Commonwealth countries have a more limited Fair Dealing exception, but it specifically covers referential works, such as Bing or Google Image Search. Most other European countries have a list of "public interest" exceptions which are very specific and narrowly applied.For instance in Hamburg, Germany Google was initially slapped with an injunction demanding that they cease (in German: http://www.linksandlaw.de/urteil73-thumbnails.htm). But a later case made an interesting "implied consent" ruling. In Erfurt the judge described that thumbnails were a limited use, that the creation of thumbnails could be countered by Robots.txt and the search engine cannot be reasonably forced to ask each and every website for permission due to the huge number of sites. (again, in German: http://www.linksandlaw.de/urteil171-bildersuche-thumbnails.htm). But this argument fails if the photo was posted on the webpage without permission of the photographer. So the full allowance of thumbnails is still in the air in German. This is something that legislation could fix by specifically allowing thumbnails, but the government has not taken that step yet. So this matter is still somewhat up in the air and facing legal challenges outside of Fair Use (U.S., Israel, Brazil) and Fair Dealing (U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, India, etc.) countries.