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?"
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.
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.
Only one of the top 10 gaining queries for the week ending Nov 8th could be considered remotely related to porn.
Of course, I figure they probably filter the results a little for the Zeitgeist.
What?
What you're thinking of is Booble. Of course, they had their own run-in with Google over their origional graphic.
They only show thumbnails and keep out context, it is such a small portion that it is "fair use". The companies complaint is that illegal foreign websites are illegaly showing their images and google is finding them. The company should be going after the illegel websites but international law is a bitch and Google obviously has deeper pockets. I have no doubt that Google will squish them though, this is nonsense. Welcome to the internet.
Regards,
Steve
There's no such thing as bad publicity. This is a simple publicity stunt for a pathetic website/company.
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
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...
You're right! They should also ask about each html page they want to index, individually, just in case you have one of them copyrighted, put it on the web for your own personal use, don't want anyone to be able to copy it, can't manage a robots.txt file and can't be bothered to password it.
The difference is that google stores these images on their server, which is supposed to be copyrighted material. Also, you can't claim that just because they did not maintain a robots.txt file that Google has no liability. The site owner should not be responsible for checking that all search engines are not stealing content. If this legally holds, then it means any mom and pop search engine could just steal as much content as they wanted.
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.
Do you think it's pure coincidence that when a company does things that Slashdotters like (IBM recently, Google, etc.), everybody develops a soft spot?
Are you old enough to remember when Google first hit the scene a few years ago? Yahoo, AltaVista, and all the other old-line search engines were becoming noticeably less useful every day, as opportunists found better and better ways of link-spamming the robots that fed those sites. The search engines themselves didn't seem to respond at all, which made searching more and more frustrating every day. In some cases (Yahoo comes to mind), the site pages became so bloated and portalesque that they offended aesthetics and load-time guidlines.
I remember clearly the first few weeks I was using Google: it was so refreshingly simple and clean, and it loaded in a snap. There was almost no link spam in the results, less than Yahoo by a factor of 100 for most searches. And there were no annoying, distracting ads. It was like paradise had been reborn.
Nowadays, that's not quite so true. Google has gotten more bloated than it used to be, but they've kept it pretty thin, all told. And they added advertisements, but kept them out of the normal flow of results and text-based only, which is a lot less aggravating to process in sight. And while the results occasionally get cocked up by spam, Google actively works to keep its results relevant by tweaking its algorithms and pruning spammers.
Also, I remember the rumors that started flying about various search engines raising revenues by selling hit placements, possibly without any on-the-spot notification to the user. This really offends the senses, because search engines lose value when the results aren't neutral and unbiased. Google does search-related ads, but in such a way that you trust what you see is aboveboard.
That's why everybody loves Google so much--they've consistently demonstrated a lot of concern for their customers, in ways that put them head and shoulders above the rest of the industry (and corporate entities in general, I'd imagine). Heck, Google is better behaved than most people I know!
We like them because they seem to be looking out for us.
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.
It's a shame judges aren't allowed to slap plaintiffs and their lawyers, it really is.
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
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.
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.