August 25, 2005 9:11 AM PDT
Adult-site publisher takes action against Google
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Perfect 10, in a filing Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, asked the court to immediately halt Google from allegedly copying, displaying and distributing more than 3,000 Perfect 10 photos.
"Google is directly infringing on our copyrights. They are copying and showing our work on their Web site," said Norm Zada, Perfect 10 founder. "They are also placing ads on these Web sites that are infringing on our work."
Perfect 10 first became aware of Google serving up text links to other Web sites that allegedly carried copyright images of Perfect 10 models back in 2001, Zada said in an interview Thursday. The company then sent notices to Google, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, asking the search giant to discontinue linking to the other sites.
Last year, Zada said, he learned Google was allegedly displaying photos of its copyright work on its Web site through its images feature that links to other Web sites. Perfect 10's request for an injunction is part of a copyright infringement lawsuit that it filed in November against Google.
Google did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
Perfect 10's lawsuit against Google is similar to one it filed against Amazon.com in July. In that suit, Perfect 10 makes similar allegations against Amazon's A9 search engine.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of copyright infringement. The court ruled that companies that are created with the intent of encouraging copyright infringement should be held liable for their customers' illegal actions.
Within days of the court's ruling, Google found that people had uploaded and watched copyright content such as the movie "Matrix" via its new video search tool. The search company quickly removed much of the full-length studio and television content.
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2000 when they started their infamous "Search Inside" feature. A
book I wrote and sold via their early small vendor program was
searchable this way, and there was plenty of bootlegging, and
there still is. I hope the Court recognizes the rights of us poor
copyright holders and asks Google and Amazon to send us back
some of the money we lost when we let them have access to our
material.
Incidentally, Amazon took 45% of the retail price, and made me
pay for shipping.
Francie Schwartz
Author, "BODY COUNT"
(Listed incorrectly as "Body count" by Amazon)
2000 when they started their infamous "Search Inside" feature. A
book I wrote and sold via their early small vendor program was
searchable this way, and there was plenty of bootlegging, and
there still is. I hope the Court recognizes the rights of us poor
copyright holders and asks Google and Amazon to send us back
some of the money we lost when we let them have access to our
material.
Incidentally, Amazon took 45% of the retail price, and made me
pay for shipping.
Francie Schwartz
Author, "BODY COUNT"
(Listed incorrectly as "Body count" by Amazon)
http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm
Placing this file on their web server would likely stop Googles indexing bots from collection Perfect 10 pictures. There is also a peace of HTML, called a meta tag that can be add to the top of an HTML page that has the same effect.
http://searchengineworld.com/metatag/robots.htm
The burden of protecting content falls on the copyright holder. Surely Perfect 10 was aware of the fact that search engines use software to automate indexing. Even before image and video searches were widely available, using the above methods is common sense for any web based content publisher to keep search engines from indexing section the authors doesn't want them to.
The 9th Circut Court of Appeals ruled in Les Kelly Publication v. Arriba Soft Corp. that it's was fair use and therefore not an infringement for a search engine to display thumbnails of copyrighted images in its search results.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/8E22982657C96BE188256D5C00518BF5/$file/0055521oop.pdf?openelement
http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm
Placing this file on their web server would likely stop Googles indexing bots from collection Perfect 10 pictures. There is also a peace of HTML, called a meta tag that can be add to the top of an HTML page that has the same effect.
http://searchengineworld.com/metatag/robots.htm
The burden of protecting content falls on the copyright holder. Surely Perfect 10 was aware of the fact that search engines use software to automate indexing. Even before image and video searches were widely available, using the above methods is common sense for any web based content publisher to keep search engines from indexing section the authors doesn't want them to.
The 9th Circut Court of Appeals ruled in Les Kelly Publication v. Arriba Soft Corp. that it's was fair use and therefore not an infringement for a search engine to display thumbnails of copyrighted images in its search results.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/8E22982657C96BE188256D5C00518BF5/$file/0055521oop.pdf?openelement
The right terminology is "copyrighted images."
Dunno why that bugs me so much, but it does.
The right terminology is "copyrighted images."
Dunno why that bugs me so much, but it does.
Search engines cannot possible screen everything that the spiders pick up, since the idea of an automated crawler is to deal with the sheer volume of pages and images. Most high-tech lawsuits are frivolous and the only ones to win in the end are the lawyers.
I think it's much cheaper to pay good developers then lawyers
- lawsuits = new high tech buisness model :(
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by
August 26, 2005 6:40 AM PDT
- I think I have to side with Google on this one, if your website contains martial that you want to make $$ on then you must password protect it in a member designated area. If the pages and or files are publicly accessible though a spider searches then I think that data should be deemed public domain.

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See all 50 Comments >>Search engines cannot possible screen everything that the spiders pick up, since the idea of an automated crawler is to deal with the sheer volume of pages and images. Most high-tech lawsuits are frivolous and the only ones to win in the end are the lawyers.
I think it's much cheaper to pay good developers then lawyers