Posted on 11/22/2004 10:11:05 PM PST by Slings and Arrows
Porn publisher Perfect 10 Inc. sued Google for copyright infringement last Friday, accusing Google of failing to remove from its search results thousands of photos posted online (on non-Google sites)without permission from Perfect 10. The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, states Perfect 10 Inc. alleged that any web user can find its copyrighted pictures of nude women which have been pirated on other websites, for free by performing Google searches.
According to a wire report, Perfect 10 said it has sent 27 formal requests to Google to remove the offending sites from its index and stop displaying the photographs in its search results, but was not satisfied with Google’s response. “It’s very difficult to make money when all of your pictures are given away worldwide for free,” Perfect 10 President Norm Zada told the Los Angeles Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at searchenginejournal.com ...
P.S. Sorry for the excerpt, but there's an LA Times connection.
You'd think the morons would sue the sites that are pirating their copyrighted material and be happy that Google made it easy to track down the thieves. Of course people who produce porn aren't the brightest bulbs in the world.
If it goes to trial, this suit could be relevant to FR's ability to post complete articles from other news sources (as "fair use" of that information).
I'm sure the suit is being filed on firm moral principles, and not because Google has far deeper pockets than any two-bit porn site. < /sarc>
Exactly
I'd say the porno punks are going after deep pockets. I hope they lose and lose big.
I don't think Google can pick up material from within the paid portion of a site, e.g., Google can pick up articles from OpinionJournal.com, but cannot pick up the paid portion of the WSJ site. So it seems that the pornographer is suing simply for allowing users to collect images togther on one page, without having to go through the porn site's intorductory pages and/or advertisers. Which seems top be a weak case copyrightwise, as the material is freely available anyway.
Unless, or course, I'm wrong and Google picks up paid content.
My grandma used to say...dont borrow trouble...some day maybe I will catch on too....
WOW! A pornographer seeking censorship!
Yes, and yes. I'm surprised John Edwards isn't representing them.
Can we see some examples?
Google doesn't store the actual images, just small thumbnails and a link to the site that hosts them.
There's no way they are infringing on the author's copyright.
Just wait. It'll happen, given enough time. ;o)
Sounds as ridiculous as suing the Yellow Pages for listing pawn shops that might have stolen property.
Bring on the ACLU. You just know someone's rights are being violated here. Drat, where is the ACLU when you really, really need them! Oh yeah, that's right, they're hovering around churces making sure no nativity scenes go on display! (sarcasm off)
I doubt that sincerely. However, since I'm a nice guy...
ANN COULTER!
MICHELLE MALKIN!
The Rule is now invoked.
[Oh, and what was it that sent Maureen Dowd over the edge again?]
That's what I thought immediately - an LA Times/FR connection, to be precise.
we will need pics to aid our analysis...
It's actually quite easy to stop google, or any other legitimate crawler, from caching your website by using a robots.txt file. Go here for details: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html
:O)
P
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