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...
Chances are most of their paying customers from google. If they really don't want their images indexed, ROBOTS.txt beckons...
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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) --
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.
This could be an example of bad publicity. Now everyone knows that Perfect 10's content is available for free on infringing sites, and how to find those infringing sites.
The shareholder is always right.
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
I find Google very useful, I don't want it made less useful becuase of some stupid lawsuit.
"Why do you care about such a company?"
First off, why shouldn't we care about companies ? They are a large part of everyones daily experience nowadays.
Secondly I like using Google, I like the image search and I realise that if this porn company gets anywhere with this case then google will become less usefull. I wouldn't like that to happen so I am supporting google in this.
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
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.