- Related Stories
-
Google to feds: Back off
February 17, 2006 -
Google's ad sales tested in court
February 13, 2006 -
New lawsuit looming over Google's use of 'Gmail'?
September 13, 2005 -
Adult-site publisher takes action against Google
August 25, 2005 -
Vote on .xxx pushed back a month
August 16, 2005 -
Bush administration objects to .xxx domains
August 15, 2005 -
Adult site sues Amazon over sexy images
July 1, 2005 -
Google loses trademark dispute in France
January 20, 2005 -
Google wins in trademark suit with Geico
December 15, 2004
(continued from previous page)
Google is facing a growing number of lawsuits that could imperil its lucrative business model, which relies in part on the ability to make "fair use" of copyright works and sell advertisements linked to trademarked keywords.
The Authors Guild sued Google in September, claiming that the Google Print Library Project violated copyright law. The Agence France Press news agency also sued Google for allegedly using photos and headlines in violation of the law.
Google won a case against Geico after a judge ruled that selling ads linked to trademarks was legal, but lost one in France. A federal judge in Nevada ruled last month (click here for PDF) that Google's cache feature is "fair use" of even copyright works.
The Perfect 10 lawsuit has received a high level of public attention, not least because of the 2003 Arriba Soft decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In that ruling, the court sided with an image search engine over a photographer who claimed the automatically generated thumbnails amounted to copyright infringement.
This case is different, Judge Matz ruled, in part because of a financial relationship with AdSense. Although Google claims its policy prohibits such Web pages from being included in its image search, the judge said "Google has not presented any information regarding the extent to which this purported policy is enforced."
A November 2004 post on Overlawyered.com, which boasts of chronicling the "high cost of our legal system," quips that Perfect 10 is "an unsuccessful California pornography business that has branched out into the litigation business."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group in San Francisco, filed a friend-of-the-court brief (click here for PDF) siding with Google.
It argues that creating thumbnails is "fair use" under copyright law, "both because it promotes the progress of digital innovation and because it enhances public access to knowledge and information online."
Friday's decision is only a preliminary one, and the next step likely will be an appeal before the 9th Circuit. Unless the appeals court dismisses the case, a trial would have to be scheduled before a final decision--including the question of damages for copyright infringement--would be reached.
Amazon.com, which licenses technology from Google, also has been named as a defendant. The two cases have been consolidated, and Judge Matz said he would publish a second order dealing with Amazon's potential liability.
See more CNET content tagged:
image search,
injunction,
copyright law,
Google Inc.,
women
When we were demonstrating some high end monitoring equipment (for the chairman of my previous employer), the first web pages we trapped and displayed belonged to a white haired executive vp with a penchant for cheerleaders. :)
... maybe increase their productivity searching for useful knowledge, therefore expanding the mindset of the whole population, therefore helping the world & technology develop far quicker than if the majority of gents only adorned 1 inch squares of what they can view every day (as long as they weren't reclusive)(although the internet may be a reclusive area?)
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: /
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.
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.
So a newspaper should be held accountable for any stolen goods being sold through its want ads?
Ebay needs to check out weather every good being sold on its site is not stolen?
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 ;) on a foreign site www maxxuss com (put the dots in...I don't want to be shut down by DMCA)
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
-
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.
-
Reply to this comment
-
-
- robots.txt has nothing to do with this case
-
by declan00
February 26, 2006 8:24 AM PST
- from the article:
-
-
- Worst Web Design I Have Ever Seen
-
by Soupir
April 4, 2006 1:00 AM PDT
- Dude, your site is an animated GIFfy piece of crap.
-
-
- Worst Web Design I Have Ever Seen
-
by Soupir
April 4, 2006 1:00 AM PDT
- Dude, your site is an animated GIFfy piece of crap.
-
-
- Worst.Website.Ever.
-
by Soupir
April 4, 2006 1:01 AM PDT
- Your website's design stinks. Animated GIFs and no CSS? Y-a-w-n.
-
-
See all 27 Comments >>Steven Moshlak
www.computerlegalexperts.com
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.