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February 21, 2006 2:40 PM PST
Nude-photo site wins injunction against Google
Last modified: February 21, 2006 5:10 PM PST
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U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled Friday that Perfect 10, an adult-oriented Web site featuring "beautiful natural women" in the nude, has shown that Google image search probably infringes copyright law "by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs."
The Los Angeles judge said he would award Perfect 10 a preliminary injunction against Google, and gave lawyers for both sides until March 8 to propose the injunction's wording.
Google said on Tuesday that it plans to appeal the injunction, and predicted it will have no effect on the "vast majority" of its image searches.
Perfect 10 sued Google for copyright infringement in November 2004, and then in August 2005,
The photo publisher says it's plagued by copyright pirates who pay its $25.50 monthly fee and then reproduce its copyright images on sites that are indexed by Google and incorporated in its image search feature.
Google: Nude photos aren't art
In an unusual position for an Internet firm with aspirations of being a media hub, Google argues that Perfect 10 (P10)'s high-quality nude photographs are not creative. Here's an excerpt from Judge A. Howard Matz's opinion rejecting that claim:
Google argues that P10's works are not creative because P10 "emphasizes the objects of the photographs (nude women) and [P10] assumes that persons seeking Perfect 10's photos are searching for the models and for sexual gratification" Google contends this "implies a factual nature of the photographs."
The Court rejects this argument. The P10 photographs consistently reflect professional, skillful, and sometimes tasteful artistry. That they are of scantily-clad or nude women is of no consequence; such images have been popular subjects for artists since before the time of "Venus de Milo."
In a
If Google offered only its traditional search feature, optimized for computers with desktop-size screens, the outcome might have been different. But the judge noted two differences: First, the search company apparently receives AdSense advertising revenue from some of the photo-pirating sites, and second, Google's image search has an option for mobile phones.
Google Mobile's
In a telephone interview with CNET News.com on Tuesday, Daniel Cooper, Perfect 10's general counsel, said, "Certainly the court found those two factors to be of interest. Overall we feel very good about it."
Google did win, however, on one key point. Matz said that the "framing" feature of the company's image search, which displays
"While we're disappointed with portions of the ruling, we are pleased with Judge Matz's favorable ruling on linking and other aspects of Google Image Search," Google litigation counsel Michael Kwun said in a statement. "We anticipate that any preliminary injunction will have no effect on the vast majority of image searches, and will affect only searches related to Perfect 10."
See more CNET content tagged:
image search,
injunction,
copyright law,
Google Inc.,
women
If they are sample pics on the main page available to the general public, what is the big deal so long as Google credits the source (and it does). It would just mean more traffic.
And third, If other sites are hosting prefect 10's copyrighted pics, and Google spiders them, isn't it the third party who is responsible for infringing?
I guess the answers to these questions will surface in time.
put
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
I am not sure that I can deduce that it is www.perfect10.com
On the other hand, web indexing is mostly automated with very little human intervention (with the size of the web being what it is). Even a human would have some difficulty separating the legal content from illegal content in a lot of cases. How then is a piece of software is expected to be able to do that? There seems to be more and more pressure on web content providers and facilitators to use technology to enforce existing laws (and there are plenty of laws that forbid plenty of things on the web). There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention, but I am really skeptical that software with that kind of intelligence can be invented in the near term, and I shudder to think of the social impact if such software is invented.
As an example...
Has ANY newspaper been sued successfully for running want ads of stolen goods? The newspaper is earning money off other ads in the paper (equivelent to Google earning $ with Adsense).
If a newspaper does not have to verify the legality of what is being sold in their very own paper how can Google be held accountable for what is being sold on 3rd party sites?
Perfect10 has to go after the pirates, not Google.
BTW...seems to me that, in America, you can get some pretty good free advertising for your website by just launching a suit against Google or Yahoo etc....when this gets shot down in the courts I hope Google can counter sue for the boost in revenue Perfect10 will get from this 'air time'
****Personal Act of Tyranny***
Oh ya...don't forget...if you want to run OSX on your x86 you are NOT allowed to know how to do it in the US...there does seem to be some info
Why didn't the website owner deny the directories in a robot.txt file in the root of the web server?
And didn't the website owner gain web traffic thanks to Google?
This lawsuit sounds like an attempt at grabbing free press and suing a big company for money. Nothing more.
This ruling endangers everything a search engine indexes: words, photos, icons, etc.
Why should copyright and patent laws serve only the corporate arm? Why can't it also serve the public interest?
Think of the economic impacts if search engines had to be shut down because of copyright laws.
- Duh...robots.txt
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by computerlegalexperts.com
February 23, 2006 7:23 PM PST
- Google's attorney's blew it. Perfect 10 has the ability to to not have their files indexed by putting a robots.txt file in their main directory. Someone call Judge Metz and give him a heads-up on this.
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See all 27 Comments >>Steven Moshlak
www.computerlegalexperts.com