Slashdot Mirror
Porn Site Sues Google Over Linked Images
Joel from Sydney writes "According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Google is being sued for copyright infringement by a Los Angeles-based porn site. The complaint revolves around Google's Image Search, which allegedly displays copyrighted pictures and links to unauthorised mirrors. The complaint also alleges that Google Search is providing 'links to password hacking sites that provide ways to gain illegal access to [the complainant's] website.' Where will it all end?
(Note: free registration may be required to view the article)." The same AP story is being carried by eWeek, no registration required. Reader Nath adds "Interesting that there's no Thank You from the site for the traffic that Google sends its way due to search hits; are these companies forgetting the important role that search engines play in their business?"
He can't insert a ROBOTS.TXT file and can't seem to handle his passwd file, and he wants to sue Google for his ineptitude?
I hope they squash him and don't give him a plug-nickel in "settlement".
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
If I remember correctly, their porno was no good anyway.
Geeks, boycott Perfect 10! They'll run out of money!
Jay | http://oldos.org
Chances are most of their paying customers from google. If they really don't want their images indexed, ROBOTS.txt beckons...
is change the web addresses of their images, since google never updates their image database...
If they got the pictures, then Mr. pr0n company needs to somehow protect them better. And it's not like it's Ansel Adams photography either.
And instead of suing Google for providing a link to some page that allows one to exploit their site, why not make something more secure?
Yet another company guilty of doing things The American Way.
-- n
Surely image thumbnails have already been established as fair use by the courts multiple times? This sounds like just pure sue-the-rich-person ambulance chasing to me.
They should learn to use robots.txt files, and as for the other sites, it's those that are infringing on copyrights, not Google so if they should sue any, it's the wrong company. But, of course, Google probably have more money they can try to get. :-P
:-P
Google should just say "oh, sorry we listed you incorrectly" and block their domain.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Google's response is to remove any link to their website from their search results. As soon as they see the drastic decline in new visitors, they'll come crawling back.
What?
You can use the Google Image Search (GIS) on non-porn related searches. Try using GIS under the search engine "cheeseburgers". This has no merit.
GIS works so well, that quite frankly, any search could potentially lead to an adult image.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I don't believe Google caches images so there is no copyright issue. Google does index what is allowed to be indexed and placing images on the web in the first place is asking to be indexed, robots.txt or no robots.txt, someone will find your site (if you are lucky in fact) and may link to it.
Is linking to a site a copyright infringment nowadays? I guess that is up to the court to decide at this point.
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe Groklaw will start linking Autopr0n to promote an "open source alternative"?
From the article:
Perfect 10 publisher Norm Zada said he is targeting Google because the company is using the allure of naked women to draw more visitors to its site and generate more advertising revenue.
Riiiiggght. That's been Google's business model all along! Now that you mention it, the two "O's" in Google do kind of look like giant breasts! Who knew I was using a porn search engine all along???
Please, this is ridiculous. I'd hate to see Google settle with these idiots.
So they're not suing google for linking to images on their own servers, but for linking to images on someone else's site who they don't have the energy to go after. (Or perhaps just b/c google has deeper pockets). I wonder whether google will bother to fight it; this could probably be settled with some $ and then google could quietly close their images search since they didn't bother much to maintain it anyway. But if google can be sued for linking to material on other servers, it will seriously decrease the functionality of the internet. Not for free porn - I'm pretty sure that is on the net to stay - but for more useful information. The beauty of an automatic search engine is lost if someone has to screen every link for illicit content; eventually nobody will want the hassle of running a free search engine.
When we have free sites like goatse, lemonparty and tubgirl?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Never mind the robots.txt.
;)
Isn't that what this is for in the first place?
If they're not going to use it properly, then it should be stricken from the books
Google looses, they win
Google wins, they win
..to get their name in the news. Wouldn't be surprised if they had the press releases sent out before drawing up any claims.
Wanna get nasty? - DaNasty
Heres the link:
http://www.google.com.au/search? %22index+of%22+%22last+modified%22+boobies
Not having a robots.txt file doesn't give google permission to use his content. If Google takes a query by you, looks all over the net for images you might want, and then displays a page with other people's copywritten work for you, that sounds like pretty clear copyright infringement to me.
Now, if google said "Here is a list of places you can find these images", that's different. Fine line, but line none-the-less.
paintball
Just as long as Jordan Carpi can still be viewed freely....whew...
http://www.commaecho.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have always had an issue with Google providing copyrighted images on its site through this service. They should probably be asking each copyright holder for permission first, like every other site on the net. I realise this is not feasible, and is simply avoided by a robots.txt file, but the onus should be on Google to ask for permission rather then the copyright holder to prevent unauthorised copying. It's any wonder something like this hasn't come up sooner.
It seems that this is a test case the EFF has been waiting for for years: Specifically, should search engines be expected to be the policemen of the internet? The other posts seem to think this is a spidering issue that can be resolved with robots.txt. In truth robots.txt is irrelevant because this guy isn't suing over Google's cache of his own website. He is suing over Google suing other people's websites. In other words he is suing Google because Google, by allowing search, is facilitating people to locate images that might have been stolen from his site.
Fascinating, no? This is the exact sort of precedent that would argue you could sue Google because you can find P2P apps there, or if you can find an illegal mirror of an Isaac Asimov book Asimov's estate could sue Google while ignoring the mirror. And this case is being put forward by an inherently publicly unsympathetic defendant: a porn site. I will be curious to see where this goes.
He said he fears his company, which claims 100,000 different visitors a month to its website, will be driven out of business unless Google is forced to stop distributing the "free peeks".
Now, come on. This is Slashdot. What better innuendo setup could you possibly want?
(Goooooooogle has free V!agra that will make your pen1s longer!!)
It's funny how people's morals change to suit them. Nicking images off someone else's site without permission used to be regarded as rude at best, and very rude indeed if you were actually linking using their bandwidth from your site. That was nothing to do with copyright (though I suspect that issue is pretty clear-cut here anyway) and simply a matter of polite netiquette. When did nicking someone else's graphics become socially acceptable?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...take it's entire site down, and replace it with a nice notice to all the googlers out there WHY the site is down and WHO they have to thank for it (complete with contact info and addresses and phone numbers and fax numbers...)
if they do that even for a day i think these idiots will get the point that search engines are important to the internet... we need them and the functionality they provide. this is how they work and how they have to work.
Ok, I suppose I need a lawyer to sort this out for me, For something like this, dont you need to prove Guilty Intent? Or is that for other types of law? I'd heard, (And this was in my Grade 11 law class mind you) That to be found guilty, someone had to make the decision to break a law, there are special considerations for either altered states of mind, But a guilty action, by accident, is not nearly held to the same degree of consequences as a guilty action by intent? Anyways, someone setting me clear on this would be nice,
This is rediculous. This company is suing Google for crawling the web and recording images and information that have been stolen from the website in question by OTHER PEOPLE! They are suing Google because losers in other coutries pay the $25/month and then copy the images to their own site. Google's spider then finds them. Its not Google's fault that this site's customer's are misusing the site's content. Nor is it Google's fault that other people have decided to hand out their own passwords to the site.
Google is simply crawling the web... any legitimate judge will correct this pr0n company and make them go after the people who are actually cheating them...
Just another case of "go after the big guy cos he has more money that the little guys that are actually causing the problem". I hope the web site goes out of business and the sleeze bags go to hell...
But of course, it had to happen. Google now has money and is now an obvious target for the litigous sort of bottom feeders who aren't to converned with whom they blame -- as long as it is someone they can bully, extort or push into bankruptcy. Google, of course, has money, so they'll extort them.
I certainly hope that the courts will decide that Google cannot be blamed for not keeping track of what chunk of data represents someone's property or not, and whether said property is served from the site the owners intend it to. This is silly.
Then again, so is the judicial system since you can never be sure of the outcome of such a case. Unless, of course, one of the parties is willing to commit more money to the case than the other. You can always buy a victory in the courts, if not formally, then in effect.
If the logins are posted in such public forums, they should be even easier to detect and disable. All while still driving more visiter to thier site.
the only ones that are really winning, the lawyers.
=1000101
Wouldn't it seem, that rather than telling Google "You may not index this content", shouldn't they be going after the sites themselves? This makes very little sense to me. How is a site whose automated system catalogues and indexes the content a more legitimate target then the sites who deliberately put up and host the content?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
"If they got the pictures, then Mr. pr0n company needs to somehow protect them better."
You mean like "somehow" the music, and movie industries protect their stuff?
Besides weren't we the ones holding porn sites up as examples of NOT doing what the movie, and music industry does by making their stuff "available"?
Someone post a +5 Informative on the website's password, plz. kthx
"Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An intellectual property desk reference by Attorneys Stephen Elias and Richard Stim 7th edition"
Run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore, so none of you have any excuses for knowing what the law says, or I don't understand legalese.
doesnt have pics though
The lunatic is in my head
The real reason for this is for the porn site in question to get some publicity. Think about it for a second and it makes perfect sense. There are a bazillion-quillion porn sites around. This one just got a HUGE amount of press from their little lawsuit. It wasn't free, but for sure they are making a profit off the moneys they payed a lawyer to write up their lil lawsuit.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
It'll just mean more people lining up with cap in hand hoping to get some free money from Google. Google, especially now it's a publicly traded company, probably needs to demonstrate it's on firm ground here and take it court.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
This will get thrown out of court unless Perfect 10 sends a few select 18-22 yr old "representitives" to the presiding Judge's house to (insert one or more of the following: repair his cable/car, clean his pool, wash his car, apply for a job, try to get a raise at a current job, be taught sex ed and have to stay after class, get lost and require directions, have no way of re-paying him/her, etc...)
Flood them with /.'ers that will suck down all there bandwidth viewing the freebies, while never buying anything!
Yes! The power of Slashdot!
I would rather be ashes than dust!
This guy claims that Google is hosting porn to lure in more users? LoL I've seen a horsefly, and I've seen a house fly, but I don't ever think we're going to see this lawsuit fly.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
no technically it is reality. that is how the entire fucking internet works and will basically continue to work regardless of what happens to google.
if you dont know how to protect your copyright, you dont deserve to have a copyright.
they gave the authority by NOT having a robots.txt. that is how the internet works. that is how publishing stuff on the internet works. you cant chagne that due to laziness.
The complaint also alleges that Google Search is providing 'links to password hacking sites that provide ways to gain illegal access to [the complainant's] website.'
;)
It's mind-numbingly easy to catch pirated passwords... All you need is to log the IPs of people logging in. Any password used from more than say 5 completely different IPs (not part of the same subnet) within an hour is pirated. How hard can that be to program?
Too hard I guess...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
booble (www.booble.com)
So an American company is trying to make money by suing another American company. What's new?
Vivid Video, Wicked Video, PlayBoy, Hustler, and other porn sites should advertise on /.!!
All they need to is say they're an online magazine for GEEKS!!
How is this any different than caching the text of a website? For that matter, who gives Google the right to crawl my websites? Well, ME of course. The web is a public place. Most websites want traffic, those that don't can use a robots.txt file. It's the de facto standard, and every legitimate web crawler will obey it. Plus, every web designer either knows about it, or can Google it to find out about it.
In other words, I call PR stunt. A well executed one, I might add.
I am have made account for friends at Slashdot. Please go
b ers/index.html
:)
http://www.perfect10.com/perfectten/p10_pages/mem
User: slashdot
Password: slashdot123
"From Russia with love"
Google's Image Search, which allegedly displays copyrighted pictures
I don't see where the word "allegedly" comes into this. If you assume that pictures can be copyrighted, then Google's Image search displays almost exclusively copyrighted images. (Just think - what percentage of images on the web were created before Mickey Mouse?) I hate it when people use the word "copyrighted" to mean "copyrighted by me, and not freely distributable, and taking into account that I have the money to hire a sizable team of lawyers."
The question is whether caching thumbnails is fair use. And I would argue that if the site in question happily sent Googlebot the images without even bothering to set up a robots.txt, it's clearly not Google's fault.
If anyone would even know the site existed without Google linking to them. Sure there are other engines out there, but Google is the one everyone looks at. At least they are getting free publicity out of this whole thing now. Maybe I will file a lawsuit.
I am have made account for friends at Slashdot. Please go
b ers/index.html
:)
http://www.perfect10.com/perfectten/p10_pages/mem
User: slashdot
Password: slashdot123
"From Russia with love"
Credit companies sued over porn IP: "A Beverly Hills pornographer is ... filing a copyright and trademark suit against Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc. The porn company says that without the support of these financial institutions, infringers wouldn't be able to steal their stuff."
Which failed: "U.S. District Judge James Ware tossed out a copyright and trademark infringement suit brought against Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc. by Perfect 10 Inc....`A lot of copyright [litigation] is being pushed by pornographers who are trying to take advantage of cases brought by more mainstream media,' Bridges [representing MasterCard] said."
That would spoil their chances of getting rich quick. What's the betting that all involved in the case, if/once it goes to court, suddenly start getting lots of porn spam?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Do you all have some emotional conenction to Google or something? "Be strong, Google!" "I hope Google delists them in their index! That'll show them!" "They're just lowlifes! Trying to get money! I don't like them!" "I would hate to see Google cave in!"
Google loses. Pays millions of dollars. And...??? How are you affected? Why do you care about such a company? Do you own stock? Because they give you nice searches and that makes you feel good, you've gotten this idea they're worth defending? This all seems very lonely if you ask me. That is, when you bring up notions of hate(which can only mean it's corollary love, too) when talking about a shitty porn site suing what is essentially just another shitty advertisement company.
I realize the idea of posting on this site at all seems pretty lonely as well, though, heh.
I am sure one way is to limits on robots.txt, another way is to limit from which pages could be images linked. see at Preventing image theft. Note that this could also be done with page links... For example CISCO prevent to link to part of its pages (in order to prevent broken links they said)
Well, you know.
Lemonparty? I thought that was the Republican Party!
"Choosing between Democrat and Republican for President is like choosing between Goatse Guy and Tubgirl for national desktop image."
(Apologies for sullying this discussion of pornography, filth, and depravity with a gratuitous reference to politics.)
Norm Zada must have confused google with booble.
Why didn't google tell us they had nekkid wimmin B4 the IPO! Isn't nekkid wimmin the drivin force behind the internet boom boom va boom? I meen hootage and hottage, raw and nekkid. Why I bit there's even a nekkid contortionist hiding out there in google land. Mmmmm nekkid contortionists mmmmmm
Q: How does a porn site most efficiently use its advertising budget to reach male wired porn fiends? A: Sue google and get mentioned on slashdot.
Palm Trees in the San Francisco Bay Area
Time to email google and ask for the porn site to be delisted from Google.com
He could have done it long ago.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
Incidentally, if I were in Google's shoes, I'd do a giant size "fuck you" and filter out anything to do with any company threatening me with a law suit. See how their visitor numbers go then.
This xbiz article (ads on that page are NSFW) has more information about the lawsuit:
I wonder why Perfect 10 didn't just use the DMCA to make Google remove/hide the links to the infringing pages. Google has complied with such DMCA requests in the past and has even published a DMCA Policy. It is interesting that the suit mentions trademark dilution, wrongful use of a registered trademark, and unfair competition rather than (or maybe in addition to) copyright/DMCA violation.
The shareholder is always right.
Does that mean I can't use google image search for my pr0n need anymore? The horror!
Urm surely its up to the porn websites to include the right meta-tags that prevent search engines from spidering pages that they wish not to be spidered.
s .html
...
This page has a good explanation of how you can use the robots meta-tag to prevent search engines from indexing pages.
http://web-support.csx.cam.ac.uk/webliaison/robot
Im assuming google are adhering to this policy and if so then its up to the porn site to put the relevent measures in place to prevent image poaching.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
The owners of Goatse.cx are to sue slashdot for posting links to their website.
Link intentionally not included!
The complaint also alleges that Google Search is providing 'links to password hacking sites that provide ways to gain illegal access to [the complainant's] website.' Goodness, really? What keywords do you enter to get those links? Er, so I can avoid entering those keywords, of course. Why, I'm quivering with moral indignation already.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you place something on a publicly accessable webserver and take no action to prevent it from being found by the likes of direct linkers or search spiders, I think that should be considered negelgent on your part.
"What crap! Those images are copyrighted and no one should be touching them!" you might say...Well, the bank doesn't leave money on a pile in the middle of the lobby, they keep it in the vault now don't they? You can check the HTTP Referer, you can make a robots.txt, and in fact many porn sites do this. I can't believe someone would actually try to sue because they don't know how to configure their own equipment, or they where too lazy to do things properly, especially in a case like this.
However, I do like finding the porn sites with the samples numbered sequentially and not blocked from direct loading at all so you can just change the 01.jpg to an 02.jpg....03.jpg....oh yea 04.jpg AHEM I mean that's just bad business. Indeed.
......05.jpg......
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I've previously had Goatse and Tubgirl inflicted upon my eyes, but when I saw your post, I thought "Lemonparty? What the hell is that?"
Now I know. But that was your idea all along, wasn't it? Bastard!
100k new people a month are paying 25 shells a month to look at nude pics from this one site? WOW!
People still pay top dollar for net pr0n when no doubt there are many times over more "free" images and movie clips, used solely for advertisement purposes, wild on the web than any single site offers? UNREAL!
So Perfect 10, a company which most likely couldn't pull this racket off without services like Google, contends that this same service is threatening their existence? REDICULOUS!
In closing, don't kill the messengers, especially when it's their hand that feeds you.
I bet they missed that little detail.
I don't know if this is admin's responsabilty due missuse of robots.txt. The fact is: if google can reach those nice photos, anybody can. Right?
- teh Googel can't be worng OMG teh suers wmust be on teh spoke raelly were are we going if they start etc. etc. etc.
The following assumes that there is nothing unethical about the way Google does its business -- i.e., that they don't do these things like violate copyrights and link specifically to "hacking" web sites directly and intentionally. Err, you know what I mean.
Google offers a very broad, theoretically unbiased service for the entire internet. Inasmuch as the internet is polluted with filth, then an unfiltered search of the web using certain keywords will return a bit of it.
And anyway, why am I not surprised that the first story I read about Google being sued over its images search engine involves a disgruntled pornographer? (Not that others have or haven't sued; this is only the first I've read.)
Google does use and respect the robots.txt tag and it is no problem to ask it not to index folders on your personal site. If someone is illegally using your content then it is the persons providing it who are the problem, not the spider that mirrors the site. Spiders may carry illegal and copyrighted content, yes, but since spiders tend to drop the cached eventually if the original site goes down, the problem is still best solved by removing the site with the bad content.
.htaccess to prevent anyone and thing from using my images without having the right url as referrer. This is easy to do and perfect for preventing other sites of linking directly to given file types like swf, jpg and png.
I personally use a smooth
How you and your content appear in search engines is entirely up to you.
Some porn providers actually encourage you to to use their content under some license terms, this is how I got the content for the instant wank galleries at hardcoretorrents.com. Perhaps the porn provider just needs to provide the content they feel other people are violating under better terms?
Why anyone would be foolish enough to ask to be removed from Google is something I do not understand. The hits generated from them, at least according to my logs, is extremely valuable and important. More visitors, more income is true in most cases. And my logs clearly indicate that if I was to be removed from Google, then the number of daily visitors at my torrent site bt.g.la and other sites would go down. It's that simple.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
"The complaint also alleges that Google Search is providing 'links to password hacking sites that provide ways to gain illegal access to [the complainant's] website.' Where will it all end? "(Note: free registration may be required to view the article)."
Where is the google link to the article?
Google is just providing a needed API (Application Porn Interface).
How else am I supposed to find pictures of red-headed cheerleaders with lollipops?
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Google's stock goes through the roof... it was only natural that lawyers would go after them. They've probably been waiting for google to go public before bringing this up.
Interesting that there's no Thank You from the site for the traffic that Google sends its way due to search hits; are these companies forgetting the important role that search engines play in their business?
Yes, these companies LOVE IT when people leech their UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH by way of direct links from Google, the World's Biggest TGP.
I am failing to see how this reader's statement is (1) relevant, (2) poignant, or (3) connected to anything having to do with companies "forgetting the role search engines play in their business."
you are = you're
they are = they're
their content (content that belongs to them)
are not = aren't
and it's buffoon not bafoon
Well, I agree on one point : Google should remove the links to cracks and warez sites from their index, since it's quite obvious that nothing good can come from them.
:(
This is not a theoretical position, I'm directly affected by this - searching for generates links to my site, links to partner sites, my adwords, and crack sites on the first pages
Serious question time but in the culture of "litigate like mad", where do we stop?
This porn company is sueing bacause of copyright infringement, what next do we sue Google for next; because if you search for something you wrote, and someone else has stolen it without using your copyright (e.g. some software I wrote), or the GPL is being violated, etc... Then we *must* sue google for this crime. Do we have to appoint someone to check *every* google link?
If it is found that google is guity, then they have aided and abetied a crime.
Consider *any* terrorist who uses google to search for the group to join, who then go on to commit a 9/11 type attack. Do we sue google for aiding and abeting mass murder? Are the directors *personally* liable? Are the staff? Are the shareholders? Does the US put on trial, and if found guily, execute a few hundred/thousand/million people for their "part" in this crime? Or what happens if another school mass killing is found to have occured and the people who carried out the act used Goggle to find out information, or to find an ammo supplier etc..
Where do we draw the line with stupid litigation? When will people stand up and take responsability for *their* acts, *their* incompentances, *their* failings, rather than blaming others. Or when will the correct people be blamed for *their* acts rather than trying to off-load the blame onto others??
and breathe
Jaj - wondering when sense will prevail in the US courts.
Will they sue Usenet providers next? Afterall, some of their copyrighted pics probably show up on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.whatever; and you can probably find hacked passwords to their site on alt.h4>0Rd.passwordZ.
Image resolution has nothing to do with copyrights.
Wrong. In this particular case it actually has quite a lot to do with whether copyright is enforceable.
Google and others should adopt a policy such as:
IF you threaten to sue us due to any content that we link to, simply send us the domain names in question and we will completely forever remove any links to your sites.
Don't Tread on Me
Very good point about the traffic steered the way of the pr0n website because of Google images but they are still suing. The probably figure that they will get more money from suing then for selling subscriptions.
Dashboard Widgets
I wonder how the complaintent would react if Google just dropped their domains from the search index. When new traffic suddenly died off from that avenue I wonder if they would sue again for being ignored.
what whiners.
Surely we can see the similarity between this and how p2p software is responsible for pirating - providing a mechanism. Google must, and will win, and this will be used in p2p cases.
[EXT. The SHOPKEEP is ranting on the footpath of HIGHSTREET BLVD]
SK: Gaze into my well curtained windows! Feast your eyes on my glisteing wares! But not too closely!
HAPLESS CONSUMER: W00t! Check out those shiney trinkets!
[SK cracks HP over the head with something dense and blunt.]
HP: Ouch! That hurt! What was that for?!
SK: You were going to remember my goods for subliminal interjection in future purchasing decisions!
HP: That really hurt!!
GWB: Can I go now Shopkeep?
SK: You still here? Look! Oil! Right, now if you'd like to step into my place of business here we can start the transaction. Would you mind putting this blindfold on? Thanks. Now we have a 'break it and you buy it' policy, mind the foot-shaped step there. If I could just have your credit card? No worries, I'll just take it out of your pocket for you...
(Note: free registration may be required to view the article).
... I'll just read it from the google cache.
No need
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
The pornographer has a few other options beyond not distributing his .htaccess file and having a robots.txt to keep googlebot away.
One that jumps readily to mind is to check the refering URL when a request for an image is made and to only send the graphic if the referrer is on an "approved" list of sites. Otherwise, return a 401, 403 or 404 error for the graphic.
If he's using Apache on his site, there's an example in the Apache documentation on how to set that up.
That won't stop "pirates" who have access to the site via a passworded account or a valid affiliate site, but it should cut down on automated bot-raping of his graphics.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
They aren't forgetting the contribution search engines offer to their site through hits; it's just not relevant in their minds at this time.
If someone you think is infringing your copyright, do you just say "ah well
the guy bought me a beer last week, so I'll let him off"? Nope, this is what
the Porn people are doing, they're ignoring the beer and just going for the
payout.
Remember porn is an industry where suing your own mother is normal business,
of course "normal" is debating her contract where it says she has to be spitroasted by two huskies, while a horse watches and waits for the leftovers.
There's a difference between being top of PageRank statistics, and caching
images, and this porn site may have a point. In the end the effect may be that
Google stops caching porn images.. which will only damage clickthroughs to the
sites in question.
In the end, Google 1, Porn Site 0.
It seems though that it's increasingly the business model of companies to let someone into their networks without so much as a password then sue them for using that access.
Are web servers not being written with password access any longer? Is it illegal or impossible to keep people and search bots out of a site if they don't use a password? No! So why the hell would this guy's ineptitude make him worthy of Google's money?
Hell, he should pay Google for tipping him off that anyone who accesses his web site from beyond the main page doesn't need a password.
Perfect 10 publisher Norm Zada said he is targeting Google because the company is using the allure of naked women to draw more visitors to its site and generate more advertising revenue.
Google's image search doesn't display advertisments.
Basically somebody sees $ signs in their eyes now that google has money and wants a piece of the action?
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
The publisher, Norm Zadeh, (a Ph.d, as he likes to point out) unfortunatly has committed to a rather phyrric conflict with people who steal his content. In particular, it tends to be a favorite resource for celebrity fakers. He's been committed to going after the search engine companies for some time now, believing them to be profiting from it. I'm afraid this whole enterprise will drive him and the company to bankruptcy.
If it wern't for this, though, Zadeh should really be some sort of geek hero. A former Stanford university professor (economics, i think), who wrote a successful book on poker systems, he eventually decided to start his own men's magazine, mainly using red hot girls from eastern bloc countries. Thus a short, bald. geeky guy- who's main intrest was in mathematics- has surrounded himself with money and honeys.
Its a shame this suit is going to be his slashdot legacy.
"The evil Google displays copyrighted images". Well of course they do, DOH!!!
most people avoid paying for porn sites not necessesarily because they're pricey, but because they don't want to be tracked or disclose credit card info.
A robots.txt file is really not the correct solution. What Google is doing with the cached pages and images is copyright infringement. The system should be opt in and not opt out, but that would make Google's system practically worthless.
As a content provider I am rather upset that Google (and the wayback machine for that matter) are distributing my copyrighted material. I never gave them permission. In fact I did the opposite, that's what that little (c) stands for you know? But I am not about to use a robots.txt file or email them about it. Why? Because on the Internet, if you can't find it then it doesn't exist. If I complain then I am afraid that my website will be blacklisted and my search rankings will plummet. You don't believe me? Then you try it. Do no evil my ass.
IMO it is just a matter of time before the courts correct this sort of mass copyright violation. It'll take years, and by then technology will make this issue irrelevant. But eventually.
If google didn't index this stuff, they would have no idea the unauthorized mirrors and password hacking sites existed. If you're so into policing your copyrights, go after the criminals that google has been nice enough to find for you.
All they see is $$ and lawsuit.
Are these the same pr0n web sites that scoop up expired domain registrations and make them into web sites that point to their pr0n sites? This way, search engines see tons of links to their pr0n sites and give them higher ranking due to their perceived popularity.
Isn't this biting the hand that feeds you?
People who pay for porn are idiots who can't be bothered to run a USENET bot software (which is point and click) or something else. Honestly, there is more free porn than you have disk space to store in one week of a good USENET feed. Even if you can't figure that out, there is emule, torrents, irc, and web sites galore.
People who pay for porn are truly morons. They get what they deserve. Think of it as evolution in action.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Creating thumbnails has been legally upheld in court as not being a copyright violation. Sorry, it's totally legal. That's why you see so many of those thumbnail gallery sites.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Sue the sites, not google...oh...wait...those sites probably don't have any money...yea. Can we send some kind of "convincing person" over to where this moron lives to perhaps do some convincing things to this asshole? Such as, oh, cut the power and telephone wires on his house so he can't infect the rest of the world with his stupidity?
Hyperlinking is free speech, preview pics are argueably derivitive works or fair use. If google can index it, guess what, you distributed it to them, and your distributing it to everyone else.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Do you really have to ask that?
It will end when everyone is so tied up with suits we cant even breathe.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If they cannot protect their pix from someone jut going there and watching them then they are ultra lame !!
All pix should be served with a cgi/php/ (or whatever output your cubehead prefers ), and authentication should be checked.
Everyone knows that, instead of suing google, they should kick their tech crew's ass (and hire me)
also as mentioned : yes there is robots.txt and google obeys them (unlike other suckers)
And where would I find the free pr0n passwords? :-)
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
According to teh article it seems to stem more from Google linking to sites that have illegal copies of thier images and ways to illegally get into their site.
So do what everyone else does: use Google to find those sites, then send them cease-and-desist letters and cancel any passwords they list. Don't blame the messenger.
Google and others should adopt a policy such as:
IF you threaten to sue us due to any content that we link to, simply send us the domain names in question and we will completely forever remove any links to your sites.
Can you imagine the technical nightmare for Google to verify the authenticity of every such request?
Of course, the ultimate endpoint of this phase of the War of the Web would be a letter to Google that looks like this:
Dear Google:
This letter is to inform you that certain images and text being indexed by your search engine are copyrighted property of Microsoft, Inc. Please immedeately cease and desist all linking to any material originating in the microsoft.com domain.
Sincerely,
Bill Gates
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
dont bite the hand that feeds you
I own a small software company. It's not difficult to find serial numbers for my software using Google. While I'm not particularly delighted by that, I understand that there is little practical that Google can do about it. Google isn't hosting the information.
However, a lot of these sites get closed down very quickly. What bugs me is that Google DOES continue to host that information in their caches of the web pages.
Courteous, well written emails and letters to Google asking for help in avoiding this material loss to my business go unanswered. Thanks guys !
-S
"Take if off!"
It's rude to nick the images and not give credit to the originatic site. It's not rude to nick them and provide a link back to the original site. Google certainly provides links back as much as it can and it only shows thumbnails from it's own site.
Back in the olden days it was considered polite to mirror pages and files if you were going to be showing them to a lot of people.. spread the load out and save everyone money. Sadly most companies aren't bright enough to understand that once it's digital it can be copied endlessly with little effort but that their own bandwidth costs money.
One more bit of evidence that copyright is an idea incompatible with the reality of modern computers and computer networks. The programmers have figured it out (giving us opensource).. when is the rest of the world going to stop whining and just deal with it. If you understand the reality and deal with it then you can make money off of it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
i googled for monika zsibrit and it didn't work. but hooray for google spelling suggestions!
Wow how fucking stupid are these fucking people!!! It is there fault, that google is caching there pages. Google has every right in the world to do it too. Google also has the right to cache pages that may display passwords to there site. This porn site should be suing the site that is allowing passwords to there site to be shared, not google. It is up to the site owner to put a robots.txt in there index and stop there site from being cached. If they think they are right, they shoulod o and sue every other search engine in the world.. Mother FUCKING idiots in this fucking world!!!
http://DiabloHeat.com | http://Kyle.TheOCSucks.com | http://TheOCSucks.com
My parent post seems to have been modded both Flamebait and Troll, possibly several times, though also (+1, Insightful). Would one of the down-modders please make an anonymous reply and tell me why? It's a perfectly serious post, making the IMHO reasonable observation that a lot of Google's features tread a fine line between helping their visitors and outright breaking of the law. Their Usenet archives have similar problems, as does the Google Cache, and both of these have been talked about here plenty of times before.
Was it the bit about ROBOTS.TXT that people objected to? If so, sorry, but that's just down-modding through being ignorant of the law. The Internet has no special significance, and the fact that someone didn't follow a particular somewhat standard protocol (the robots file) does not exempt everyone reading their site from obeying the law, any more than sending a technically incorrect e-mail (using HTML, for example) exempts the reader from any legal obligations they might have not to divulge confidential information in it.
I honestly don't understand the down-mods here. Do people just want to will Google to be right on this, because they're Google?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There is definitely an argument to be made there, but contrary to what several people have posted in this thread, the article you cite does say quite clearly that the ruling by the US appeal court has a limited significance. In particular, the article says:
The article continues with some justification for this statement. So while you're correct that the image size/res may be relevant, it's still not clear whether in this specific case they actually are.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I respectfully disagree. AFAICS, taking any images without permission, even with attribution, is just as morally and legally wrong on the Internet as it would be anywhere else.
Consider, for example, the many web graphics companies, who make lots of graphics available for free in return for a link, but rely on commercial businesses paying for sets of images to fund their work. If anyone could just come along and nick them in exchange for nothing but a credit, those companies couldn't operate any more, helping neither them nor the many people who benefit from the other graphics they kindly give away for free.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
While I admire your belief in your principles, there is simply no serious evidence to support the approach you describe as a general policy -- that is, to show that it can support creative industries in anything other than exceptional and isolated cases.
No, you really can't. You might be able to make money off something related to it, but once you give it away, you gain absolutely nothing for the original work. And making money of service industries based on a project is far from easy.
Before open source came along, that might even have worked for some people: in most places, honest souls did cough up the requested amount for shareware, and getting your name on a good, popular project might have been good for some future employment prospects.
Unfortunatey, today's Internet-enabled users seem to expect everything on a silver platter for free, whether legally or otherwise. Collectively, we have pretty much killed the previous, much better idea almost completely.
Can you name even one open source project that isn't at least one of:
- an established "big name"
- a mass-market application
- supported by corporate backing
that generates a living wage for its creators based on donations? Do you know anyone who actually does make that decent living you mentioned using this approach in a smaller, less significant context?Here's a personal example, to show how implausible your approach seems to me, and why.
I write software for a living. I'm employed by a fairly small company (around 50 of us) which sells specialist libraries for various mathematical tasks. We are the market leaders by some way in our field. We have a small, strong management team, and over 80% of our staff are directly involved with software development rather than overheads.
We make some money from the initial sales, and some money from on-going support contracts we offer to cover new developments, bug fixes, etc. Fortunately for us, the nature of our market means on-going development deals tend to benefit both us and our customers pretty strongly, so a lot of them choose to sign up. In case it still isn't obvious, we're a textbook example of a company with good prospects for making money off on-going support deals.
Even with all this going for us, without our original income from sales, we probably couldn't afford to be in the business we're in: we generate enough money overall to pay reasonable wages but don't make bazillions in annual profits, and would lose a lot of that income the first time we gave a customer the source code if it weren't protected by copyright.
It is coincidental that I happen to work for this company. My point is simply that it's a perfect example of a company that has good prospects as a service provider rather than a software retailer, and yet still it relies significantly on up-front sales income as well. If we couldn't do it based on service income alone, it's a good bet that most small companies or one-man outfits without the market penetration, most larger organisations with more overheads, or those who aren't lucky enough to work in a business that almost necessitates constant support won't be able to do it either.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
And this is a reason to condone (possible) illegal activity on any company or user's part?
Hey folks,
it looks like some Googles competitors (Y!MSN) are pissed they are dumb heads!
Google can claim fair use for this act, also if they wish to be removed, they can immediately using the emergency removal tool.
They can use the no cache, or robots.txt to help crawlers or web people.
Now, funny thing, how can they sue google, I guess google must have made sure this is sewn up tight: They are using a web server, and a web protocol, that in the RFC ACTUALLY DEFINES the use of the robots.txt as part of the specification (http, well I think it does) - so they open up thier content to be searched using this technology, it is thier responsibility to make sure they keep thier documents safe.
What next, people suing google because thier naked pictures get online, thier driving license scan, thier credit card numbers... stupid!
They are allowed to remove and block using meta tags and robot files any content they are in control of, but now the worst part is, they complain about OTHER sites linking to them...
Now what if a certain republican decided they didn't like certain websites attitude towards them, and took this oppourtunity to pass a law protecting porn sites, and then from there, decided it didn't like certain newspapers (you see, we get more scared if physical news gets censored... stupid again) were reporting.
It is 2-3 steps to go from, google, remove these XXX password links, to someone being able to censor anything if they have enough cash.
In Korea, only old people use google for pr0n.
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