Partial Victory for Perfect 10?

An anonymous reader writes "Internet News is reporting that a recent statement made by district court judge A. Howard Matz has declared a partial victory for Perfect 10 in their efforts to stop search engines from displaying their photos in an image search. From the article: 'Perfect 10 is likely to succeed in proving that Google directly infringes its copyright by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs. Perfect 10's copyright infringement case may take years to wend its way through the courts. But a victory could hamstring image search, along with video and audio search services.'"

Comments

Question

[HeavensBlade23]

How is an image search substantially different than a text search? Wouldn't making a thumbnail with a link to the original image fall under fair use, the same as google cache or even the partial webpage text displayed in a regular google query?

Re:Question

[Belseth]

How is an image search substantially different than a text search? Wouldn't making a thumbnail with a link to the original image fall under fair use, the same as google cache or even the partial webpage text displayed in a regular google query?

They are displaying the entire copyrighted work not an excerpt. The owner has legal control of where and how the work is displayed. They would have to recieve permission to use the work in any form. A thumbnail is still the image itself just greatly reduced. They might get away with showing a modified alias of the work where it's stylized in some way but that's the only way around the issue I can think of.

Re:Question

[HeavensBlade23]

Google cache is also displaying the entire copyrighted work in many cases.

Re:Question

[ceejayoz]

Google Cache is legal - there's not much difference here. Seems pretty open-and-shut precedent in favor of Google.

Re:Question

[ScrappyLaptop]

Interesting, but I would consider a greatly reduced resolution picture to be the equivelent of an excerpt. Think of it this way; you are getting only every 100th pel, or 1/100th of the original work. That also fits the definition of an excerpt, don't you think? A lower resolution thumbnail taken in this respect IS a stylized, modified alias of the original work.

Re:Question

[TubeSteak]

If you RT entire FA, you would have discovered that the Perfect 10 is suing over thumbnail images.

Why?

Because those thumbnails are similar in quality to content that Perfect 10 sells for mobile phones.

In other words, the thumbnail is copyrighted work. This is why you (the parent post) are wrong, and the GP is correct.

Re:Question

[chrisxkelley]

well in this case, we just have to make sure google only indexes one picture for every thousand words :)

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The thumbnail is a copyrighted work on a publicly accessible website. If other websites are putting up Perfect 10's images then their argument should be with them.

Re:Question

[Romancer]

And what about magazines that feature an artists work in pictures about art galleries or about "this painting sold for a trillian dollars" or newspapers that feature the paintings or photographs as supplemental graphics to a story? Aren't these out there to bring up as examples of old business models that have been doing this for as long as I can remember?

As an alternative that they might all agree to, how about google placing a watermark over the images they cache or display that says "Link" or something?

I wouldn't mind. I can always get to the real image by clicking on the thumbnail.

Re:Question

[YouTalkinToMe]

The tricky bit here is that they are arguing that the thumbnails have the same resolution and quality as photos that they sell to be displayed on mobile phones, meaning they have an inherent value.

Of course, Google is not using them in the same manner, but one could argue that by displaying the thumbnails, Google is diluting the value (for example, for those people who use Google Image Search from their mobile).

Re:Question

[mikkom]

Usually framing of other peoples content for your site is also concidered to be strictly not okay and google is doing exactly that with their image search.

Re:Question

[wheany]

Google image search creates the thumbnails from bigger pictures available in the web for free. There is no value to be diluted. Anyone could take those same pictures and resize them and put them on their mobile phones. Except if they don't have the skills to do so or have a shitty phone.

Re:Question

[wheany]

It's not like they are trying to make it appear that its their own content. For example see this image search result for papaya.

The frame clearly says where the image is from and "Image may be scaled down and subject to copyright.". A little lower they say "Below is the image in its original context on the page: www.tropicalfruitnursery.com/ fruitproducts_pr.htm"

It's not like they're saying that "We found these images from out image database, here, have a look at our images that meet your criteria"

Re:Question

[Walkiry]

>Because those thumbnails are similar in quality to content that Perfect 10 sells for mobile phones.

So, if you want to stop google from scanning and indexing all the books you want which are copyrighted, all you need to do is to offer every phrase in the book for, say, $5.99/use for fortune cookie manufacturers or even mobile phones. I bet the cost of a low-traffic server (thanks to the ridiculously high price) with the online shop for that would be a hell of a lot cheaper than the lawyers.

Re:Question

[ciroknight]

When you reduce the resolution of an image, you're throwing away data, so a thumbnail isn't just the whole image, it's an interpolated version of the original image.

Take a book in your hands. You know it's illegal to copy word for word out of that book, it violates copyright. So instead what you do is you take every 4th word from the book, and make a text out of it. This is essentially what a thumbnail is, only a thumbnail's message is more clear. (To be fair, a more accurate methodology would be to remove all occurrances of similar words in near contexts, but building an algorithm that would be sensible on a forum is just stupid, and I'm lazy).

The way around the issue is simply to show this in court. Take a gigantic billboard sized image, and start reducing the quality. Show exactly which pieces of data are completely destroyed by the shrinking of the image. Once a judge or a jury saw this, it's pretty irrefutable.

Re:Question

[jacksonj04]

Perhaps defaulting to not indexing images, but putting something in robots.txt to explicitly allow indexing?

Re:Question

[Tim C]

I see your point, and in fact my gut reaction is to agree with you, but I can't help wondering if a court wouldn't rule differently.

We're not talking about a summary, or a selected passage, we're talking about something that can only be generated by processing the whole of the original work. It's not so much an excerpt as a distillation. Now that may still be fair, but I have a nagging disquiet that it may be ruled to be a derivative work, rather than an excerpt or similar.

To use a book analogy, I'm not sure how far you'd get if you carefully took 1% of a book's content, taking pains to retain the essential meaning of the work.

Re:Question

[LinuxGeek]

Ok, I have to admit to being a tad confused over this issue. Google is only indexing and thumbnailing what is publicly available from the perfect10 site, correct? Then they are concerned that google is saving me a single step in doing the same thing? I could go download the publicly available artwork and shrink it for my phone and leave google completely out of the loop.

Re:Question

[gidds]

They are displaying the entire copyrighted work not an excerpt. The owner has legal control of where and how the work is displayed.

So the entire copyrighted work is already available on the web, and because Google is cacheing it, they're crying foul? If they don't want people viewing their photos, how about not putting them on the web in the first place???

It just sounds one step on from the arguments about linking. They may have a legal point here, but their position seems harder to justify on moral grounds.

Re:Question

[Surt]

But they are not in fact displaying the entire work, and are in fact offering an excerpt of something like one in sixteen pixels.

Re:Question

[hackstraw]

Why the fuck can't they just add the following to /robots.txt, and save the time money of legal expenses?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /pictures

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Their argument (and a good one) is that google should default to respecting copyright, not default to doing what it likes until told to piss off.

Whether thumbnails breach copyright on the full image is an independant consideration to the general principle of whether google should take "no instruction" as carte blanche to index or not...

In other words, in many ways it makes more sense to say "if you want to be indexed, add 'yes please' in a robots.txt" than to say "if you want not to be indexed, add 'no thanks' in a robots.txt"

Opt In vs Opt Out - Opt Out favours google, Opt In favours people's copyright - and you can bet SEO chimps will happily write an "index me, baby" robots.txt file...

Re:Question

[TheGavster]

Because the robots.txt file has not had a recent and very successful IPO.

Re:Question

[mikiN]

1. Take any book and scan/OCR it
2. Produce 4 derived works, each with every ((N % 4) + 1, N integer)'th word from the original in it.
3. ???
4. Profit!!

Sigh. Soon 'they' will come running after someone whistling 'Always look on the bright side of life' or the theme song of 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', or kids hopping around on the pavement 'only ever so slightly like Michael Jackson did', aggressively panhandling them for performance license fees.
It's a sick, sad world.

Re:Question

[metternich]

What they're complaining about is google displaying images (or rather thumbs) from other sites that are infringing on their copyright. They're probably already using robots.txt on their own site.

Re:Question

[mikiN]

Dang. Shouldn't post while debugging cyclic buffers on a DSP.
Should be words N*4+B total_words, N integer, B=Book=1..4

Re:Question

[sh00z]

Google is only indexing and thumbnailing what is publicly available from the perfect10 site, correct?

Incorrect. According to the FA, Perfect 10 charges $25.50 a month for site access, and (possibly, but it's unclear) a per-download charge for cellphone-compatible images (which are the problem, because Google's thumbnails are a close approximation of these, and are being made available for free, depriving Perfect 10 of their revenue stream).

Re:Question

[dosquatch]

To use a book analogy, I'm not sure how far you'd get if you carefully took 1% of a book's content, taking pains to retain the essential meaning of the work.

Um, didn't you just describe Cliffs Notes?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

So,what are you trying to say? You think that google is paying them $25.50 per month to crawl their website so they can index their images? No. Google is crawling the PUBLICLY AVAILABLE, UNRESTRICTED PORTION OF THEIR WEB SITE. If Google can see it, I can take my browser there directly and get it WITHOUT paying $25.50 per month. It would seem they are depriving themselves of the revenue. They need to secure the pictures if they want to make people pay to see them.

Re:Question

[jandrese]

But the thumbnails are still available from the internet without paying the $25.50 (I can guarentee Google doesn't sign up for sites like this just to index them). It seems to me Perfect 10 is sueing Google because they have a retarded business model that wasn't working anyway.

Re:Question

[IAmTheDave]

They are displaying the entire copyrighted work not an excerpt.

Well, all I really NEED to see is boob. So if Google just want's to show me that particular "exerpt", then all are happy in the end. (A nice rear end is also acceptable as an exerpt.)

Re:Question

[gstoddart]

They are displaying the entire copyrighted work not an excerpt. The owner has legal control of where and how the work is displayed. They would have to recieve permission to use the work in any form.

The problem with that assertion is that they put the images up on the web in the first place.

If you don't want people to be able to see your copyrighted works, or copy them, what the heck are you doing putting them up in a medium in which I get a free copy of them just for looking at that? Once it's displayed in my browser, I have a local copy.

And even if you try and do the annoying thing of disabling context menus on your site, one can always get around it -- like by using wget.

Google will not be able to selectively drop images from their seearch because this is copyrighted and that isn't; they won't be able to tell.

So, tell me again, how they can prevent this from happening?

Re:Question

[weierstrass]

You missed out the 0th word, dude.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

If they don't want people viewing their photos, how about not putting them on the web in the first place???

It's not clear whether they've done that or not.

"The judge found, however, that Google did not violate Perfect 10's copyrights by linking to pages that Perfect 10 claims are using its images without permission."

It may be that the porn guys require you to pay to view these images, and that they've been posted by someone else on a www server beyond legal reach and thumbnailed from there by Google.

Or it might just be that they're really anal about copyrights.

Re:Question

[paeanblack]

What if Google just hotlinks the complainants images instead of caching a thumbnail? Then they are not redistributing the copyrighted IP... ...and a small mushroom cloud appears over Perfect 10's server farm.

Re:Question

[bugg]

A ruling that taking an image and displaying a thumbnail for indexing purposes is not fair use does not imply that taking a few words from a book for indexing purposes is not fair use. Apples and oranges.

Re:Question

[JudicatorX]

I'd consider it the text equivalent of taking all of the common words out of a document, and indexing the res... oh,wait...

Re:Question

[S.O.B.]

There is a difference between personal fair use and corporate fair use. I can download an image and use it as my desktop background but Microsoft can't include that same image in their install as an available desktop background.

The question here seems to be is Google profiting from the image. If so, then the copyright holder may have a case.

Re:Question

[dustmite]

Because look at all the free advertising they're getting now. You just can't buy such effective and widespread marketing.

Re:Question

[Alsee]

According to the article, the judge explicitly ruled in Google's favor on the frames issue.

It appears the only issue Google is having trouble with is the thumbnails.

-

Re:Question

[Alsee]

Correct. Google's commercial states does weigh against them in attempting to claim Fair Use. I am in no way dissagreeing with the parent poster.

However I would like to clarify for others that commercial use can in fact be Fair Use. To clarify that money and profit are not incompatible with Fair Use. One of the landmark cases in the field of copyright law and Fair Use was the US Supreme Court case CAMPBELL v. ACUFF-ROSE MUSIC, INC. (1994) which ruled that copying for the direct and explicit purpose profit could in fact fall under Fair Use.

The publishing industry routinely missrepresents the law on copyright, especially in relation to Fair Use. Anyone who says that any single factor 'X' (such as commercial use or the copying of the entire work), that any single factor 'X' rules out Fair Use, that person either missunderstands the law and is unintentially missrepresenting the law, or that person *does* understand the law and they are deliberately missrepresenting it. A finding of Fair Use is based on a weighing of multiple factors, and no single factor is determinative. A use can "fail" any number of "tests", yet still qualify as fair use on the basis of any other factor the court deems outweighs them.

In fact something could "fail" all four of the "tests" commonly cited in relation to fair use, could fail all four of the factors written into law, yet still pass as Fair Use on the basis of some other unlisted factor. It would be improbable in the extreme to fail all four of those factors and still manage to qualify as Fair Use, but it is legally possible. The court has the power to consider other unlisted factors, and the court has the power to weigh them as it sees fit. The court could give the four listed factors zero weight in relation to some other overriding issue.

-

Re:Question

[Kevbo]

I don't know. This is a good analogy and at first blush it would seem that because the user/web-surfer/whatever is downloading a greatly reduced version of the original when using images.google.com. However, in Harper and Row v. Nation Enterprises, the court rules that a magazine's appropriation of a part of President Gerald Ford's upcoming memoirs, even though the excerpts were only very small parts of the work as a whole, and those types of excerpts (such as reviewers use when reviewing book) would otherwise be considered Fair Use. The court looked at Fair Use as an implied consent doctrine and asked whether the owner would have consented to the use. Well, an owner would not consent to use that basically preempts his work because the reduced copy cuts "to the heart" of the original. If the court views the thumbnails as basically taking the place of the original in many instances, and satisfying the users' curiosity as to the original, then they just might decide that Google has infringed upon Perfect 10's copyright.

Re:Question

[dbullock]

I think you're describing a summary, not an excerpt.

It's still a derived work of the original material.

Re:Question

[kimvette]

Isn't their business model obvious? It's the American business model of the new millennium: if you can do, then sue your way to success!

Re:Question

[Alsee]

The judge (preliminarily) ruled in Google's favor on the issue of their links to other sites that were infringing the images. The (preliminarily) ruling against Google is in fact on the issue of the thumbnails. The company is complaining that the Google thumbnails are similar to, and harming their market for, the small crappy versions of the pictures they are also selling for cellphone wallpaper.

They want to sell thumbnails of the full images they give away for free on their website, therefore they want to prohibit Google from giving away thumbnails.

-

Re:Question

[mikiN]

What many of us (in many different postings) are hinting at is that all this will inevitably lead to a debate on where the actual boundary between 'fair use' and copyright infringement actually lies.
Since this distinction is not well defined at all (many people will have many different opinions) it will either rage ad infinitum or some arbitrary legislation will be passed, leaving it to flocks of lawyers to pick away at boundary cases.

Just to drop yet another example: I don't believe I'm the only one who can come up with a 'sliding window' search algorithm to extract all text from books using Amazon's 'Search Inside the Book' service. Should I now start my timer and clock the time it takes for some author to sue Amazon for making excerpts from books available online just because their search can be 'tweaked'? I hope not...

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The thumbnail is a brief decription of the full and in this case publically-made available for free full-size images on the whiners website. Thumbnails have already been ruled fair-use. Maybe the whiners should make something new rather than recycle a full-size image by removing content if they want to spend my taxpayer money protecting them. This is just like the fact they try to sell you "ring tones" of already produced works by stripping them down and keeping you from making fair use by exluding endusers from manipulating their own cell phones. Little pictures on cell phones is a fully artifical anti-competitiv market to begin with for the last reason bolded. No one would buy these whiners pictures for a cell phone if regular people were allowed to supply content. Google isn't providing the thumbnails as cell-phone backgrounds anyways.

Re:Question

[S.O.B.]

The case you cited is not really applicable here because Google is not using these images for parody.

Re:Question

[bhiestand]

Because those thumbnails are similar in quality to content that Perfect 10 sells for mobile phones.

Which they didn't start selling until well after they had already filed suit against google. One could even argue that they started selling the images for phones to boost their case against google.

Re:Question

[Alsee]

I merely intended to dispell any potential confusion that profit precluded Fair Use. I have seen far too many people with the missimpression that to qualify as Fair Use you had to pass all four statutory factors, that commercial use *or* copying a full work automatically ruled out any Fair Use defense.

But to address the Google case, I'd say the portion where the judge preliminarily ruled against Google is, at best, a dangerous position. I understand his reasoning, but if accepted it means that a noninfringing individual or noninfringing business can unknowingly be rendered infringing and potentially even criminal almost retroactively. Google's activities *were* Fair Use, and they continue to be Fair Use in relation virtually all images other than P10's images. The result here is that Google's activities became infringing when P10 entered the cellphone market with their own new derivative of their own image that happened to resemble Google's Fair Use thumbnail in size. As others have noted, it is nonsensical to allow Fair Use excerpts of a text to almost retroactively be rendered infringing merely by the author offering up each fragment of his text for independant sale. A copyright holder could even deliberately target specific noninfringing activites for extermination by selectively offering up the same or a similar fragment of his work for independant sale.

Again, I do see the reason in his ruling. I just think it a very dangerous line we should not follow. I hope Google wins the case.

-

robots.txt?

[Evro]

Couldn't they just tell Googlebot not to index their images via robots.txt?

http://www.google.com/webmasters/bot.html#robotsin fo

Case closed? Oh, sorry, I forgot Google has lots of money.

Re:robots.txt?

[Geekenstein]

Kind of like saying "If I don't lock my door, it's ok to steal from me."

Sorry, that doesn't fly in real life.

Re:robots.txt?

[Pinefresh]

so you have to opt out of having your copyrights being violated?

Re:robots.txt?

[ZachPruckowski]

Maybe something like this should be opt-in? Like if there is no robots.txt file, it should default to not indexing? Personally, I feel like 99% of the web desperately wants to be on Google, hence it should be opt-out.

Re:robots.txt?

[Embedded2004]

The problem in this case is that people rip their images and post them on other sites. Which google then spiders, so their unable to disable the spidering of their property.

To me at least, it looks like they should be going after the people that steal their images, not google.

Re:robots.txt?

[larry bagina]

yes, but that's not all....

Second, most of the results for searches on his company name or the names of the models he has under contract lead not to Perfect 10 sites, but to sites that have pirated his images.

Finally, the suit claimed that Google should be held liable for helping searchers find sites that display stolen Perfect 10 images because, in many cases, those sites also show Google AdSense contextual ads. "Google not only copies and displays Perfect 10 images itself," the request for the injunction read, "but also links them to Infringing Sites with which Google has partnered and from which Google receives revenue through its AdSense advertising program."

They can ban google via robots, but google still displays their (pirated) images from other sites. Google has lots of money ... but they also make money (adsense) from those copyrighted images, which means fair use doesn't apply (per the judge).

In a fair world, they should be thanking google for making it so easy to track down people who are improperly distributing on their copyrighted images.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, Perfect 10 uses robots.txt. Part of their complaint is that other sites rip them off and Google indexes those sites, the pictures on which also still belong to Perfect 10. Also, there is some issue with Google Mobile image search. Perfect 10 has a similar service. Finally, there's a concern that Google is getting advertising dollars related to the supposedly infringing pictures.

Re:robots.txt?

[Penguinoflight]

The grand assumption is that most will want their website indexed. Of course if someone is determined enough to keep their site from being indexed/copied by google, they should have used the robots file. Copyrights are always something you have to protect yourself; Perfect 10 skipped quite a few steps involved in protecting their copyright and went straight to suing google.

This case is clearly a gold digging scheme, so here's hoping "Perfect 10" loses.

Re:robots.txt?

[drgonzo59]

Or how about just not making their images accessible without a password. A search engine just does the searching and reporting of what's out there. If people are stupid enough to put their copyrighted materials, images and other crap on the web, why are they surprised that Google picked it up and indexed -- that is what Google does. "Don't want your stuff indexed -- don't put it on the web without any kind of access authentication."

I might not like Google as much recently, in light of their position with China, but I hope they win this case. Every business out there hates Google, they came seemingly out of nowhere and went straight to the top, even as the huge tech bubble burst. So what do others do now? They are suing them of course -- the Great American Way! Some are suing that their site isn't high enough in the rankings, others that their site is too high and people can see too much of their crap.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like, "If I don't close my blinds, it's ok to look at me naked in my bedroom."
In which case, yes it is.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

That only applies to part of their case. Their complaint basically seems to be about images appearing on OTHER people's websites:

Basically they're saying
* Various people violate the copyright on our pr0n and put it on their own websites
* Since those infringing websites don't restrict via robots.txt, google dutifully indexes the infringing site
* Since google has lots of money, they're supposedly to blame for all this

The only thing talking about their own site is in the fact that they're selling thumbnails (for mobile phone use) in order to prove that the thumbnail versions have economic value. So that makes their argument "look, google is giving away our valuable thing for free. Sure, they got it from a 3rd party, but they're still liable"

Personally I think this lawsuit is a bunch of BS. Hopefully it'll blow over soon.

Note: I'm not a lawyer and have only paid a bit of attention to this. However, unlike you, I RTFA'ed.

Re:robots.txt?

[larry bagina]

Actually, I just checked... Nope. (Unless it's a different perfect10).

Re:robots.txt?

[dgatwood]

More like "If I put something out on a public table, it's okay to take it."

Besides, Google isn't "taking it" in any way that your web browser doesn't "take it" when you view a page. They aren't redistributing the original image. They are providing a reference to the original image. They are providing a thumbnail of the original image. The first is providing an index, which falls clearly within fair use bounds. The second is equivalent to quoting a small sample for research purposes, which also almost certainly falls within fair use bounds.

To "Perfect 10", good luck. You're gonna need it.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

Exactly. This really seems like another lawsuit trying to get a piece of Google because they're big.

Google shows tiny little thumbnails of images... I have photos on my website that are for sail and I think it's great if Google indexes them and makes them easy to find. I'd have a problem if they made the full resolution originals available, but then I don't put those on the web. Google doesn't even make the reduced size pictures I DO publish available without visiting my web page.

I hope these guys don't win. Google's not only sticking to fair use, but it's fair use on these guy's behalf!

They might have a beef with websites that are ripping them off, but that's not Google.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

I would suggest that displaying a thumbnail as part of a search is not having your copyright violated. Google search displays short quotes from websites as well. Is that copyright violation? Nope. Short quotes are allowed. What's the equivalent of a short quote for images? A thumbnail. Google thumbnails are REALLY small too.

Re:robots.txt?

[TekPolitik]

More like "If I put something out on a public table, it's okay to take it."

Po-tae-to - Po-tah-to. If you take it, it's still larceny.

Re:robots.txt?

[TubeSteak]

My cellphone's display is 1.5" x 1.25"
Google Image thumbnails are larger than that.

Perfect 10 is suing because the Google Image thumbnails are similar in size and quality to copyrighted works that Perfect 10 sells. Specifically, porn for your cellphone.

So it doesn't really matter if Google is indexing content off the Perfect 10 website, or off other sites that utilize Google AdSense. This is the Judge's opinion, not mine.

Re:robots.txt?

[DrEldarion]

They don't make money directly off image search - there aren't any adwords displayed on it.

If you're talking about adwords on the sites that stole P10's images, then Google isn't the one infringing on the copyright, so they shouldn't be held liable.

Re:robots.txt?

[KazenoKoe]

making money from copyrighted material does not automatically rule out fair use.

Re:robots.txt?

[SlimFastForYou]

More like standing around giving pictures away to anyone who asks for a copy.

And then abruptly dragging someone they willfully gave a picture to through the legal system.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, horray for slashdot: where you can get modded insightful commenting on an article you clearly DID NOT READ.

They are *not* suing google for indexing THEIR web site. They are suing google for indexing OTHER PEOPLE'S websites. Websites that are infringing on their copyright.

I think their legal theory is BS, and yeah it sounds pretty gold-digging to me too. However all you people screaming "duh, robots.txt, LOL!!1!" are missing the point too. You can't put a robots.txt file on a domain you do not control.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

So Perfect 10 makes these porn for your cell phone pictures available publicly on their website? So why exactly would I pay for them?

Or does Google's spider pay for a membership and then enter it's password so it can enter the member's area? That would be wrong.

As for the adsense thing, if a web page rips off your image, you sue them, not Google. If I steal your image and put it in my magazine you can't sue all the companies who paid me to put their ad in my magazine.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about "Those of you who haev brains and/or a life won't read this quote at all because of all the previous ones?"

Re:robots.txt?

[ScrappyLaptop]

"My cellphone's display is 1.5" x 1.25"

...now those are pictures only a philatelist could, um, "love".

Re:robots.txt?

[rm69990]

Could you please read the article? The scaled down versions on Google Images are the same quality and size as Perfect 10's cell phone images.

Re:robots.txt?

[MikeFM]

It'd be easy enough to make images searchable by an md5 hash of the file. Then companies could police pirates using the search engine themselves. If they fail to do so then it'd be evidence that they don't mind the content being pirated.

As someone that has subscribed off and on to Perfect 10 though they're not doing much to win my affection. I usually subscribe to them for a while when a pirated pic renews my interest in their content and then unsubscribe again when I get bored of them. Most 'adult' content is that way for me. Pirated or free images serve as advertising so long as they are smart enough to get their URL into the images. I don't like print porn because it's bulky and not user friendly (one handed use is difficult) and I don't like most porn sites because they make it difficult to browse, search, download, and view their content. Simply put, it's not a matter of paying for the content so much as getting a better user experience from pirates. I don't want to one at a time it through some crappy spammy bulky website. I'd rather download all the content to my PC and then view it in my choice of programs. If the website keeps generating new content or offers bonuses such as member sharing forums (discussion and posting of their own pics/vids) they'll keep my business and they don't need to resort to making it hard to download their content.

Just another example of a company using IP laws to make up for their own lack of a modern business model. Adapt or die.

Re:robots.txt?

[horatio]

TFA kind of obscures the fact a little that P10 isn't complaining so much about Google indexing their site per-se, but rather sites of people who have ripped off P10's images and reposted them elsewhere.

Like if there is no robots.txt file, it should default to not indexing?

So we should change the entire ruleset that governs robots.txt because one company has their proverbial panties in a wad about their images being ripped off by their own subscribers and then indexed by spiders? Any RFCs you'd like to throw out while you're at it? Maybe we should abandon TCP because that is the mechanism used to transport these images illegally across the internet.

There may be an option to add a no-index header to a jpeg file, maybe in EXIF metadata area which perhaps the search engine could honor. (Or does EXIF already have a copyright flag?) This extends an existing standard without breaking any old ones. Problem is it would be trivial to strip the bit from the file before re-posting.

Google and A9 aren't the only engines which index images. The spiders don't really (and shouldn't, save honoring robots.txt) care what the content is. They just index it so it can be found. Oddly enough, the search engines are what allow most people to find sites like P10. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. (Okay, search engines and spam.)

Google has deep pockets, so they're a target instead of the people who are actually stealing the images in the first place. I don't like the idea of stuff being ripped off. I like even less the idea of turning a well-established standard on its head. Maybe instead of attacking Google and A9 they should leverage Google, as someone else has already mentioned, to find the infringers and go after them. The pirates would just change their robots file to allow their content to be indexed anyways.

I feel like 99% of the web desperately wants to be on Google, hence it should be opt-out.

No clue what the first part of that means, hence flying monkeys are desperately wanting to come out of my butt (?)

Re:robots.txt?

[dbIII]

Kind of like saying "If I don't lock my door, it's ok to steal from me."

No - more like saying "if put signs on the street you aren't allowed to look at them without paying".

Re:robots.txt?

[RodgerDodger]

The real question is: How is Google meant to identify that the images come from Perfect 10? Google is no more capable of recognising the copyright theft than it is of recognising someone plagarising from a NYT article (and violating copyright that way).

OTH: If Google had even better image search, then the copyright owners could use Google to help track down the people who infringed by copying (not stealing) the images in the first place.

Re:robots.txt?

[PhrostyMcByte]

I'd love to see Google win this, but P10 does have a point (even if they are only making it because they want a piece of Google's pie) - should store owners have to place signs saying "no stealing" at their door, or expect to give theives free rein on their stuff?

I do believe Google has good intentions, and they don't even display ads on their image search. And maybe >99% of the web does want it "opt-out", but Google should not be above the law.

Re:robots.txt?

[RodgerDodger]

Even a very simple change to the image (like resizing it so it doesn't blow your bandwidth out, or removing the Perfect10 logo) would change the hash.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

Could you read the post you replied to? Here, I'll quote it for you so it get's e-mailed:

So Perfect 10 makes these porn for your cell phone pictures available publicly on their website? So why exactly would I pay for them?

Or does Google's spider pay for a membership and then enter it's password so it can enter the member's area? That would be wrong.

As for the adsense thing, if a web page rips off your image, you sue them, not Google. If I steal your image and put it in my magazine you can't sue all the companies who paid me to put their ad in my magazine.

So... regardless of scale, Google only indexes the publicly available images. If you put up an image publicly on your web site, you cannot seriously claim you intend to sell that image, at that resolution. If Google were going hunting in their password protected archives, that would be bad, but they're not.

I do admit, I wrote a DIFFERENT post (NOT the one you just replied to) that made the mistake of assuming they were talking about larger images. If you'd like to reply to that post and lambaste me for not reading the article, please do.

Re:robots.txt?

[rm69990]

OK, let me explain this more clearly for you. People pay for these images and then put them up on their website. Google Images downloads these full-size images, and then scales them down to the same size as the cell phone images for display on Google Images.

Perfect10 is not making these images publically available on their website. Other people are paying for them and then making these images publically available on their websites. Google Images is then indexing them from the third party websites.

Do you see what I mean now?

Re:robots.txt?

[wfberg]

This is what the DMCA is for. Just send google a takedown notice, and the search results are gone. The DMCA (safe harbor) is also (together with fair use) what allows google to index the web in the first place, without too much fear for repercussions.

Re:robots.txt?

[xenocide2]

So you made your data publicly available with the expectation that nobody would want to look at it?

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

So what you're saying is that Google is getting sued for something some random third party on the Internet did? Seems kind of silly, no?

Quoting AGAIN from my post, I believe this is the relevant part. To which you still have to add anything insightful:

As for the adsense thing, if a web page rips off your image, you sue them, not Google. If I steal your image and put it in my magazine you can't sue all the companies who paid me to put their ad in my magazine.

I'm having fun writing tags though.

Re:robots.txt?

[rm69990]

Yes that is what they are getting sued for, and the judge has ruled differently than you. And he is a judge, afterall.

He ruled that Google's ads on third party website mean that Google has not conducted secondary infringement, however, Google indexing the images from these third party websites and making them available on image.google.com is copyright infringement. There were two charges of copyright infringement, both primary and secondary, not just one. I was talking about the primary copyright infringement.

Anyways, I was merely responding to your claim that Perfect10 should not have had these images publically available, which they didn't. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Re:robots.txt?

[Breakfast Pants]

Or brightening one single color component of one single pixel...

Re:robots.txt?

[hazem]

The funny thing is... how would they find the other websites infringing on their works without searching for them on Google?

Re:robots.txt?

[SvnLyrBrto]

> I'd love to see Google win this, but P10 does have a point (even if they are only making it
> because they want a piece of Google's pie) - should store owners have to place signs saying
> "no stealing" at their door, or expect to give theives free rein on their stuff?

No, they don't have a point. Google doesn't take anything from anybody. The more apt analogy would be if you want your phone & address listing left out of the white pages and 411; in which case you most definitely *DO* have to actively make it known that you want your information to be unlisted. In fact, the last time I checked (It's been a while, admittedly.) the phone company actually makes you *PAY* for the "privilege" of being unlisted. All this is, is a blatant fishing expedition, wrongfully targeting a company with deep pockets, nothing more.

cya,
john

Re:robots.txt?

[belmolis]

You have to read the whole article carefully. Perfect 10 is suing on TWO grounds. One is for linking to other sites that display their images. The other is for displaying the thumbnails. The first is indeed BS. The second may not be.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you deliberately make something available on a publically accessible web site?

Yes, or that could at least provide some form of estoppel against action.

Re:robots.txt?

[dgatwood]

No, it is entirely dependent on context. For example, at work, we have a table in the lobby where people put things to get rid of them. No judge in the world would rule that picking something up from that table is larceny....

Regardless, from a legal perspective, this is a copyright issue, not a theft issue. Since it is a copyright issue, this case is a clear cut, open and shut case. There is zero, repeat zero possibility that Perfect 10 will win this suit, though they may get a temporary stock boost in the short term by winning the first round....

This case does not differ substantively from Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp. which was decided by the 9th circuit (California). That case found that image thumbnails by commercial search engines are fair use. This judge is actually ruling in a way that is contrary to a ruling by his own circuit on a case that's almost identical! Unless Google's lawyers are completely incompetent, this is the sort of case that, if decided in Perfect 10's favor, has basically a 100% chance of being overturned on appeal....

IANALBIPOOSD.

Re:robots.txt?

[SolitaryMan]

Case closed? Oh, sorry, I forgot Google has lots of money.

As one man once said...: Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. (Napoleon Bonaparte)

I say google should remove perfect10 site completely from index for ... no reason. This will probably be a good lesson.

Re:robots.txt?

[anagama]

There is zero, repeat zero possibility that Perfect 10 will win this suit, though they may get a temporary stock boost in the short term by winning the first round....

Except Google's lawyer indicated that the only real effect from the ruling was that Perfect 10's pics wouldn't show up in searches. In other words, Perfect 10 is likely to do a lot less business when people can't find them. Seems to me a savvy pornographer would want to show up on google a lot -- internet porn is very competitive and the ... exposure ... can only help.

Re:robots.txt?

[JakartaDean]

FWIW, I googled Perfect 10 and clicked on images. The first three pages do not have any links to their site, nor did I see anything that looked like ripped-off porn -- but I'm at work and didn't investigate as much as I'd like ;-)

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

[I am the GP poster]

The "we sell reduced versions for cash, so thumbnails are illegal" is just to bolster the case. They're trying to prove that the excerpt (so to speak) that Google is displaying has commercial value on its own.

If the thumbnail version did not have any commercial value then they would automatically have no case (no harm, no foul after all...) There's already plenty of court decisions that say that just allowing a user to FIND infringing content with your CLEARLY GENERAL PURPOSE search engine (i.e. not a napster-equivelant where it's swimming in overwhelmingly infringing content) is not illegal. The novel aspect to this case is that they're saying that what google is direcly offering (the thumbnail) has *itself* the ability to deprive the copyright owner of revenue. THAT'S what they claim makes google liable. It's what their whole case is based on.

If google was only displaying thumbnails of images that were on their site (i.e. freely available to anyone and not protected by robots.txt) then their case would have no legs at all. After all if anyone can download the image for free, they could thumbnail it themselves and put it on their phone.

Again, I think P10's argument is completely petty and needs to fail. If it requires a Supreme Court decision clearly laying out what "fair use" means to an internet search engine then so be it. It's vitally important to the health of the net (and to the academic advancement of the world as a whole) that search engines be allowed to describe the information they find publically available. They shouldn't have to fear that the information provider is violating copyright and that even *DESCRIBING* the content is infringing. This is already well-settled case-law when it comes to text. It only makes sense that a low-resolution version of an image is analagous.

Of course it's not a safe bet that the courts will make sane decisions across media boundries. They already firmly hold that making collage art is totally legal UNLESS you're doing it in music (Grand Upright Music v. Warner Brothers -- aka "the Biz Markie case"). But if this case has to be fought I'm happy that it'll be fought with a fairly non-sympathy-inducing plantiff (i.e. a porn site).

(again, IANAL)

Re:robots.txt?

[MikeFM]

How would that be Google's fault? It's not to hard to create an image fingerprint either and those are harder to fool by making minor changes or resizing. I've used them in my own image search engines. For the most part it consists of using a little math to abstract a color pattern and a shading pattern from an image and then making hashes of those. You'd have to make major image changes to fool that kind of system and in that case you could argue that the reuse of the image falls under fair use.

Although for that matter I know for a fact that a few years ago a major court case ruled that thumbnailing was fair use. Thus the explosion of thumbnail gallery sites all of a sudden. I'm no legal guru but I thought that a ruling such as that should apply to future cases such as Google's. I'm pretty sure the case I'm thinking of was dicussed on Slashdot a few years back.

Re:robots.txt?

[91degrees]

Only if there's a convention since the beginning of property laws that it can be perfectly acceptable to steal from unlocked houses.

Re:robots.txt?

[TallMatthew]

They are *not* suing google for indexing THEIR web site. They are suing google for indexing OTHER PEOPLE'S websites. Websites that are infringing on their copyright.

Great point, but shouldn't they be suing those websites, as opposed to the search engine that indexes them? No infringing material, no indexing of such. That would eliminate the problem. In fact, Google is doing them a favor by discovering those websites.

But I suppose those websites don't have multibillion dollar cash reserves.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

P10 does have a point (even if they are only making it because they want a piece of Google's pie) - should store owners have to place signs saying "no stealing" at their door, or expect to give theives (sic) free rein on their stuff?

The difference is that stealing is obviously illegal, while the worst you can say of indexing websites is that it's a grey area, and most lawyers agree it's almost certainly legal.

Incidentally, I observe that most of the stores I frequent DO have signs at the door saying "thieves will be prosecuted". Why do they put those signs there? Why, to make it perfectly clear to even the dumbest person. Now, search engine spiders are even dumber than that, so don't you think it's reasonable to expect people to spell things out for them?

And maybe >99% of the web does want it "opt-out", but Google should not be above the law.

If >99% of people believe the law is otherwise than it actually is, then that suggests that it's a fucking stupid law that should damn well be changed to reflect what people actually want the law to be. This is known as "democracy".

Re:robots.txt?

[RodgerDodger]

yeah, but that's a change that is a deliberate attempt to get around the hash; the ones I mentioned are changes the people copying the images are likely to make in any case.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I say you should go read the fucking article. You have no clue what the real issue perfect10 has is.
Hint-Google isn't spidering perfect10's network for the images in question.

Yes, it's still a stupid lawsuit, but at least some of us know WHY it's stupid, instead of proving we are.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am trying to evaluate the merits of the case.

What would some example search terms for 'Google Images' that will yield the infringing images? ;)

Re:robots.txt?

[Evro]

No, it's more like saying, "If I put something on the public internet, it's OK for any user agent to fetch it unless I tell them not to."

Re:robots.txt?

[Irish_Samurai]

OK, I have seen this Thumbnail = Exceprt statement more than a few times and would like to point out something.

Unless an Image thumbnail is defined or has precedence as being used under the guise of being equivalent to an excerpt in a court of law - this "common sense" definition is worthless.

Now, I do not know if thumbnail images have been recognized as equivalent to excerpts in US courts - I'm just pointing out that it is unsound to make "logical" assumptions about things concerning law, because law is about interpretation.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And I don't actually sell drugs, I just rent rooms to drug dealers and drug users.

Currently Google funds a lot of copyright violations. Look at Rapidshare and the thousands of forums out there that traffic in copyrighted images, songs, movies, etc. all of which serve up Google ads.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

If I were setting up a business like Google then I would agree with you -- figure out what the law actually is.

Since this is basically a public opinion discussion forum, we talk about how things SHOULD work, not necessarily how they do. That's supposed to be the point of democracy... rather than waiting for a judge to tell you how things should be, the people figure out what should happen, tell their representatives, then those representatives make laws to tell the judges how things are going to be.

I didn't say that thumbnails were legally excerpts (that would be dumb since I'm not a lawyer, nor a judge), I suggested that they were logically. Since I'm not even a citizen of your country it's entirely up to you, the people, what you do with that suggestion.

Re:robots.txt?

[dgatwood]

See my post earlier. Thumbnails in search engines were ruled to be fair use by California's own circuit in Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003).

Their case... it's crap.

Re:robots.txt?

[dgatwood]

Thumbnail = Excerpt was settled, at least for the California circuit, by Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003) . From the ruling:

There is no dispute Defendant operates its Web site for commercial purposes. Plaintiff's images, however, did not represent a significant element of that commerce, nor were they exploited in any special way. (5) They were reproduced as a result of Defendant's generally indiscriminate method of gathering images. Defendant has a commercial interest in developing a comprehensive thumbnail index so it can provide more complete results to users of its search engine. The Ditto crawler is designed to obtain large numbers of images from numerous sources without seeking authorization. (6) Plaintiff's images were indexed as a result of these methods. While the use here was commercial, it was also of a somewhat more incidental and less exploitative nature than more traditional types of "commercial use." (7)

snip

Amount And Substantiality of the Portion Used

The third fair use factor assesses whether the amount copied was "reasonable in relation to the purpose of the copying." Id. The analysis focuses on "the persuasiveness of a [copier's] justification for the particular copying done, and the enquiry will harken back to the first of the statutory factors, for . . . the extent of permissible copying varies with the purpose and character of the use." Id. at 586-87.

In the thumbnail index, Defendant used Plaintiff's images in their entirety, but reduced them in size. Defendant argues it is necessary for a visual search engine to copy images in their entirety so users can be sure of recognizing them, and the reduction in size and resolution mitigates damage that might otherwise result from copying. As Defendant has illustrated in its brief, thumbnails cannot be enlarged into useful images. Defendant's Memo of P & A, at 3. Use of partial images or images further reduced in size would make images difficult for users to identify, and would eliminate the usefulness of Defendant's search engine as a means of categorizing and improving access to Internet resources.

snip

If only the thumbnail index were at issue, Defendant's copying would likely be reasonable in light of its purposes.

So the California circuit considered thumbnails to be fair use, at least for search engine purposes. This case was appealed, mostly sustained but partially remanded to a lower court to reconsider the issues described by the content that I cut out of this excerpt, which isn't relevant to Google's case.

Note: the snipped content focuses on an image attributes page that Arriba provided but Google does not, in which the entire image is presented in a different context than the original. Google probably avoids this issue posed by Kelly by showing the full size image only in its original context or as a stand-alone image served by the original server, though the ability to see the full size image by itself might be a point where they could legitimately argue infringement, depending on how Kelly played out when remanded to the lower court, a piece of information that I don't currently have. The initial finding of the lower court said that even this use was legitimate, but again, since this was remanded to a lower court on appeal and I don't have the final ruling, I can't say with much certainty on that matter..

IANALBIPOOSD.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Perfect10 is suing Google for BOTH - indexing their website to produce thumbnails (direct infringement), and indexing other websites that hold copies of Perfect10's content (secondary infringement).

They are also suing Google for DMCA circumvention of copyright protection (?), and about seven or eight other things.

Read the decision on the preliminary injunction.

Re:robots.txt?

[Irish_Samurai]

Thank You for the info.

Re:robots.txt?

[Irish_Samurai]

I didn't mean for you to take my statement as directed towards you, you were just the last person I read who used that phrase before I decided to respond.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

Sorry if I snapped. The whole copyright thing seems to be degenerating into a camp that would have the whole thing abolished, a camp that will defend anything, and a camp that waits for a judge to tell them what to think and then declares it the way things are.

Democracy isn't what it used to be.

Re:robots.txt?

[belmolis]

Yes, but the facts in this case are arguably differentiable. The plaintiff claims that the thumbnails are of sufficiently high quality as to be of independent value and therefore that copying them is not fair use. As evidence it points to the fact that they sell the very same thumbnails for use on PDAs. I'm not saying that I favor their case, but it gives them a colorable argument that the existing ruling on thumbnails is not applicable.

Re:robots.txt?

[Irish_Samurai]

yeah, I agree - which was in the spirit of what I was trying to say.

To address the abolishonists I wanted a concise definition so that the point could be discussed with clear definitions, not a plyable grey area.

For the defenders, I wanted a clear point on what they were defending.

As for the way it is class, well - I wanted to have a starting point to work from for pushing the discussion into a more "how it should be" direction.

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

One of the problems with fair use in most countries is that, as you say, it isn't well defined, which means somebody has to stick their neck out and throw themselves on the mercy of a court.

Re:robots.txt?

[Irish_Samurai]

I would say that the problem with fair use is that the laws were all written using the media vehicle's inherent limitations as a way to self regulation.

Media used to be difficult to capture. Sure, you could record a song off the radio or VHS a TV show, but the extent of what you did with that copy was kept in check by the difficulty of propegating those copies.

The cost to reproduce VHS tapes or Cassettes with the intent to sell often required an investment, of time and money, so large that it didn't warrant the effort to make a profit. Those who could, and did, invest those resources - they were so far outside the realm of fair use that it was undeniable.

Now we have digital media. Unlawful reproduction of a work with intent to sell is now really cost effective. Not only that, but lawful reproduction is so effortless that many people have innocently blurred the line between "backup" and "multiple copies distributed at no cost under the scemantics of backup".

Then we have the people who cannot tell the difference between "Theft" and "Copyright Infringement." The lack of physical material being stolen equates to a lack of wrongdoing for these people. The concept that the initial resources used to create the work - time, talent, skill - are not intrinsic to the work without the presence of a physical delivery vehicle. If there is no "thing" then its worth nothing.

Third, we have the big money overstepping their bounds by adding controls to the media to protect their investment. Now, they are in the right to protect their investment - but not at the cost of compromising my rights as a consumer. Limiting how many times I can rip a song is asanine, but it wouldn't have happened if people didn't overstep their bounds under the guise of "fair use."

The only way to fix this problem is to create and embrace a new business model that takes advantage of media's new found freedom without having to rely on its limitations as a way of enforcing the profit mechanism.

Re:robots.txt?

[TekPolitik]

There is zero, repeat zero possibility that Perfect 10 will win this suit... IANALBIPOOSD

You are mistaken - it is entirely possible to distinguish the prior cases. BTW, IAAL.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - this case is different. However, I think it does help Google a lot.

If we were talking about copyright text appearing in excerpt as the result of a normal google search there would be no case (based on a whole pile of precedents)

The big question is whether for purposes of a fair use defense a thumbnail image is analagous to a text excerpt. Kelly v Arriba seems to give Google some help here.

The other half of P10's case (namely that the fact that they sell thumbnail versions so they have economic value on their own) is, I think, pretty weak. Another poster on this thread hit the nail on the head -- what if you a text publisher sold single lines from a book to a fortune cookie manufacturer... would that mean that fair use rights were no longer exercisible on that work? I doubt the courts would allow that outcome.

It'd be one thing if google were directly using their thumbnails to compete with P10 ("download this page of results to your cellphone, only $5!!!") but the fact is they're not. Their use of the thumbnails is only to describe content they found on the web; so it's no different from text-excerpts in that way. That plus the Kelly decision gets them most of the way home.

I need to research the decision a little more about why the court thought Google can't use fair use since they are advertiser-supported. Does this mean the New York Times book review has no fair use rights either? Seems strange to me... I'm going to have to dig a little more into the courts reasoning on this one. I'm going to assume that there's something there.

I'm also a little surprised that they're even talking about preliminary injunctions here. Is P10 being *irreperably* harmed here? Seems that they're just potentially losing a small potential revenue stream (how many people buy porn for their cell phones, anyway?!?) so even if they won it could be "made right" by Google coughing up money. Again, I need to look at the decision more in depth.

[but IANAL and you are, so feel free to ignore]

Re:robots.txt?

[dgatwood]

I think that's a pretty big stretch, though.

Any photo large enough to be identifiable would be claimed to be "of independent value" by a porn dealer (which is what we're talking about here, AFAIK). The only question that the courts can legally decide is whether the use of these images by Google is sufficiently transformative to qualify for fair use exemptions. Since it has been ruled that creation of thumbnails for search purposes qualifies as sufficiently transformative, the existence of an ancillary commercial work has no bearing.

A ruling in favor of Perfect 10 would have to effectively eliminate the fair use clauses of Title 17. It would allow a copyright holder, by declaring that "excerpts are available for sale," to make it illegal for third parties to excerpt the work in a transformative fashion that would otherwise be protected under fair use. Since this sort of excerpting is precisely the reason fair use was put into copyright law to begin with, I don't see any possibility that the courts could side with Perfect 10.

The classic example is a mural being seen, substantially reduced, in the background of a newspaper photo of its unveiling. The mural is copyrighted, and the painter may retain the rights to derivative works, including selling prints. However, if the artist were to sue the newspaper, it wouldn't fly unless the newspaper published a photo that contained only the mural, in which case it would not be a transformative use, and would not be protected. What makes Google's use transformative is the organization and indexing of the material in a fashion that is beneficial to the public good (and potentially beneficial to the copyright owner, as Perfect 10 will no doubt eventually find out...).

Of course, that doesn't mean it will be thrown out by the district court....

Re:robots.txt?

[ceoyoyo]

It seems that the old laws were poorly written, but nobody (with money) cared because technology resolved the dispute. An individual simply couldn't infringe on someone's copyright enough to matter to the big guys. But now we can, the law is vague and the big copyright holders would like to get things nailed now, and while they're at it close up some of those loop holes (like all of fair use) that were just minor annoyances before. Oh, and there're the Perfect 10's of the world who'd like to make a quick buck.

The law needs to be clarified, but with the citizen in mind. Copyright doesn't exist so that the copyright owner can make maximum profit, it exists so that there is enough incentive for people to create works, without excessively compromising the ability of the people to benefit from those works. Some reasonable penalties would be nice too. I was once told that if the police here caught you infringing copyright (copying software) you would have to pay for two copies of everything you infringed (for non-commercial purposes, of course). That's a lot more reasonable than suing little Katy for $100,000 because she copied her friend's CD.

I agree that some people definitely overstepped fair use bounds, and some even feel they're entitled to do so. The copyright owners have also repeatedly stepped over lines though. I think there are a lot of people who would be happy to pay producers and artists what it costs to produce music and movies but are not particularly happy paying a convicted price fixing cartel, especially one that rabidly and randomly sues it's own customers.

I have a lot of friends who would insist on buying CDs to support the artists (here in Canada) before the blank media levy was imposed. After that many people justifiably felt that they were being compelled to pay for music so they might as well grab some.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, whether or not there are Adsense revenue being generated by the image search engine is irrelevant. While a commercial enterprise (e.g. profit) tends to weigh against fair use, the lack of profit does not tend to obviate a finding against fair use. The real inquiry is whether the use in question is transformative in some respect, or if it instead supplants the market for the original. In this case it is clear that Google's use of the copyrighted work supplants the entire market. If Perfect 10 is selling thumbnail quality images for cell phones, then the reproduction by Google of thumbnail sized images for free means that a consumer could avoid paying the publisher altogether for the copyrighted content.

The other argument I see on here is that Google is making its own thumbnails from full-sized pirated images, and is not reproducing the actual thumbnail images for sale on Perfect 10s website. This is of no consequence. The general trend across the country is that infringement of a copyrighted work is determined from two factors (1) access to copyrighted works, and (2) substantial similarity. Here, it is clear that Google had access to Perfect 10s copyrighted works in the form of their full-sized originals which were improperly acquired by third party websites. And because Google reduced the size and quality, thereby producing their own work, the end result is substantially similar to the thumbnails produced in a very similar way by Perfect 10. On balance, it reeks of infringement.

Re:robots.txt?

[Alsee]

Is P10 being *irreperably* harmed here?

US copyright law has, for the last several decades at least, been literally written by lawyers employed by the publishing industry. As such copyright law is riddled with bugs, loopholes, and various items that are all unbelievably biased in favor of the copyright holder.

One such item of law is that any copyright infringment is to be presumptively treated as "irreperable" harm, and therefore preliminary injuctions shall be issued in favor of a copyright holder alledging infringment.

Another such "quirk" is that whereas police investigating and persuing a serial rapist must go before a judge and show at least minimal real evidence to get a court order for things, copyright holders were basically granted a special right to issue internet takedown orders themselves, and that such orders merely must be rubber stamped by a a court clerk who merely ensures that none of the blanks on the paperwork are left blank. Another "quirk" in that process is that while such a takedown order is apparently filed by the copyright holder under penalty of perjury, that "under penalty of perjury" clause is merely for show and it is entirely vacuous. It only applies to the stament that they are the copyright holder on something, and it does not apply to any allegation of infringment or even that the target of the takedown notice is even the same thing that they are the copyright holder of.

By my favoire "quirk" of copyright law is when they slipped a minor clause into the NET act. A minor little clause that redefined the term "financial gain". They redefined "financial gain" in such a manner as to include P2P and all sorts of other noncommercial activites of individuals. And by redefining that term, seddenly P2P and a vast range of individual noncommercial infringment is MOVED to now fall under the commercial criminal copyright infringment statutes. With that insignifigant clause slipped into a copyright bill, they latched onto the draconian criminal copyright statutes intended to punish commercial criminal copyright infringment enterprises and extended them to turn P2P an all sorts of individual noncommercial infringment into felony infringment. P2P and all sorts of individual noncommercial infringment are now subject to one, three, or even five year prison terms. If that law were to be fully enforced, some double-digit percentage mof the entire US population would be felons. We would need to build ten times as many prisoned or more just to hold them. The entire US economy would collapse overnight if all of these technically-felons were arresed and imprisoned. If this law were actually to be fully enforced, the citizentry would immediately overthrow the government.

Of course this law is not fully enforced. It is mainly used to threaten people into settlements in civil cases. Pay us some thousands of dollars to settle this case to make it all go away, or you might just wind up facing several years in prison on felony copyright infringment charges.

-

Re:robots.txt?

[Stephen Samuel]

Had a case like that... in an office where we often worked in the evenings, a girl across the street had this habit of bouncing around her suite with the windows open and very little on. A very pleasant distraction, but there was this underlying feeling of guilt over the implicit voyerism -- even though it took a conscious effort to avoid looking.

Finally, we sent over a girl from our office to let her know that she was very visible across the street. Her reaction was essentially a shrug.
Once we knew that she explicitly didn't mind, we could watch with a clear conscience.

Re:robots.txt?

[Anonymous Coward]

[GP poster here]
> First, whether or not there are Adsense revenue being generated by the image search engine is irrelevant

That's sort of my take too. I'm curious to see why the judge apparently made mention of it.

> In this case it is clear that Google's use of the copyrighted work supplants the entire market.

Well, supplants a tiny piece of their market. P10 is a normal porn site whose primary business is selling access to full-sized images. They also have an (I'm guessing relatively small) market selling thumbnails. I think thumbnails are probably a tiny segment of the overall pornography market.

It's equally conceivable (though rare) that a tiny excerpt from a book could have independent market value (say, if it made a good catchy t-shirt slogan) That doesn't mean that fair use doesn't apply to the written word. So even though it's conceivable (though rare) that a thumbnail version of an image on the web has economic value that shouldn't mean that Fair Use can never apply to images. That barrier is simply too low.

> On balance, it reeks of infringement.

Oh, there's absolutely infringment going on -- the unlicensed individuals who are putting the pictures up in the first place. But they're not the ones in court here.

Suppose instead of pictures, P10 had copyrighted an erotic story. Then a 3rd party put it up on geocities and google indexed it. Then it would be offering it both in excerpt (as part of search results) and IN ITS ENTIRETY (via google cache). But this would NOT be illegal for google to do because they're protected by DMCA safe harbor (as per that earlier 9th circuit decision; I don't have the cite handy but its been mentioned in other threads) P10's remedy would be to send a DMCA takedown notice, but they could not sue.

Now, how are images so different here? Because pictures of naked women implicitly express more creative value than the written word ever could?!?

Remember -- the case isn't about whether the images are legal to reproduce or not (they're not) but whether google image search is liable for second-hand infingment (unlike google cache which wouldn't be)

> And because Google reduced the size and quality, thereby producing their own work, the end result is substantially similar to the thumbnails produced in a very similar way by Perfect 10.

So if google had presented the full image they would have been safe (as per the DMCA) but because they took the effort to present it in a smaller (and LESS economically valuable) format they are now liable? Interesting theory. I hope the court can do better than that.

Re:robots.txt?

[idlake]

If other sites pirate P10's images and those sites misrepresent the images as being theirs, then those sites should be held responsible, not Google.

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

This is crap(FP)

So let me see.

[Geekenstein]

An image search takes a copyrighted photograph, manipulates it, and then stores it on it's server for display to a user of it's site.

Sorry to say, seems like a pretty cut and dry case to me.

Re:So let me see.

[AKAImBatman]

See Fair Use doctrine for more info on why this isn't so cut and dry.

Re:So let me see.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I don't see how they are being "stolen from".

The images remain on their site, and my search for "rock hard nipples" takes me to their site to possibly spend money looking at more rock hard nipples.

Would they prefer to not be found?

of course...I don't see why google can't just remove their images since they requested it. seems kinda dickish on both of their parts.

Re:So let me see.

[MarkChovain]

It's not all that cut and dry. If I got a bit since I went through. Typical exercise involves 6-8 guys in a combat situation I would have wrote it.

I don't understand why the Arriba Soft precedent didn't make this one cut and dry in Google's favour...

Re:So let me see.

[larry bagina]

From the wiki:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

...

The subfactor mentioned in the legislation above, "whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes," has recently been deemphasized in some Circuits "since many, if not most, secondary uses seek at least some measure of commercial gain from their use" (American Geophysical Union, 60 F.3d at 921). More important is whether the use fulfills any of the "preamble purposes" also mentioned in the legislation above, as these have been interpreted as paradigmatically "transformative". Although Judge Pierre Leval has distinguished the first factor as "the soul of fair use," it alone is not determinative. For example, not every educational usage is fair (see the 1914 case, Macmillan Co. v. King, although this case has only limited application since it was decided many years before the modern fair use provision became a part of the legislation).

From TFA:

However, the judge agreed that the display of thumbnails did infringe. And, because the search engines show ads against search results, he found the use of thumbnails to be commercial in nature. One of the tenets of fair use is that the usage not be commercial.

Re:So let me see.

[Concerned Onlooker]

If you're really into rock hard nipples check this site out.

Re:So let me see.

[LMariachi]

TFA is wrong. "One of the tenets of fair use is that the usage not be commercial" is not true. Commerciality has bearing on it, but doesn't automatically exclude all commercial use from the Fair Use doctrine.

Oh, honestly...

[ceejayoz]

http://images.google.com/webmasters/remove.html

To remove all the images on your site from our index, place the following robots.txt file in your server root:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

Re:Oh, honestly...

[blue_adept]

To retrieve all the items I stole from your house last night, please place a sticky note on your front door saying "star bright, star light, steal from someone else tonight!".

Honestly, if you're not even willing to do that, stop complaining when I steal from you!

Re:Oh, honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want me to shoot you in the face, please carry a sign that reads "Please don't shoot me in the face".

-- Dick Cheney

Re:Oh, honestly...

[Beolach]

That's not a good analogy. If you tell me, "Hey, come to a party at my house," and I come, and there's food on the table, and I eat some, and you say "I never said you could eat that!" it'd be closer. By inviting me to your party and having the food out on the table, you imply that it's OK for me to eat it. By making their content publicly available on the internet, Perfect 10 implies that it's OK for search engines to cache that content. If as I come in the door to your party, you tell me "Hey don't eat the food on the table," then I won't - and if as the Googlebot catalogues Perfect 10's website, it sees in robots.txt that it's not supposed to cache the images, then it won't.

Re:Oh, honestly...

[imemyself]

If its this huge of an issue for them, then they should atleast be willing to take a trivial amount of time to prevent it from happening to them. It's kind of hard for me to have sympathy for someone who takes absolutely *no* precautions at all.

Re:Oh, honestly...

[santaliqueur]

you are correct, but don't feed the trolls.

Re:Oh, honestly...

[terbo]

Really. I wonder if they will go after Yahoo next. Then Alltheweb. Then ... ditto. Damn, it would suck if ditto got sued.

Re:Oh, honestly...

[Waffle Iron]

Except in the world of your analogy where information is exactly equivalent to physical property, the general public is legally entitled to take a portion of the stuff from your house, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Honoring your sticky note is just a courtesy commonly practiced by Internet search providers. They're not required to do it.

Re:Oh, honestly...

[pintomp3]

better analogy is to put a sign up on your window telling google not to look in.

Re:Oh, honestly...

[91degrees]

So, do you consider copying publically available images to be exactly the same as stealing your television?

Re:Oh, honestly...

[eyeoftheidol]

Yea, but as the article makes clear, the images are not on Perfect 10 servers. The complaint is that other websites have pirated the images and it is there which Google is indexing

Re:Oh, honestly...

[Beolach]

There were two complaints Perfect 10 lodged; one against Google themselves caching the images, and the other against Google leading people to other pages that were using the images without permission. The "partial victory" was for Google themselves caching the images, TFA states "The judge said, however, that Perfect 10 was unlikely to succeed in proving that Google can be held liable for aiding copyright infringement by leading searchers to infringing sites." So, the judge thinks Google caching the images may constitute copyright infringment; I would disagree as IMO (IANAL) that Perfect 10 implicitly gave permission by making it public on the internet & not restricting in robots.txt. But the judge doesn't think that Google is liable for linking to other pages that infringe, and I'd agree w/ the judge on that.

So let them turn away the search 'bots

[crovira]

We'll never hear from (or of) them again.

Never has victory left such a taste of ashes in your mouth.

Re:So let them turn away the search 'bots

[srussell]

So let them turn away the search 'bots

Hear, hear! Somebody mod the parent up.

Google should expunge all references to Perfect 10 from their database, and should simply filter out any results for them.

I'm siding with Google on this one. Copyright law allows reproduction in part; only returning 2% of an image (by thumbnailing it), IMO, constitutes a partial reproduction.

--- SER

Just start hotlinking.

[Spazntwich]

Google could just start hotlinking the pics directly from their site, then resizing them to thumnails in the search.

That wouldn't be copyright infringement, right? Just yanking publicly hosted photographs from their rightful and providing owner.

Devil's Advocate

[Geekenstein]

So essentially, you're saying the onus is on copyright holder to tell someone not to steal their product?

Last time I checked, the law didn't work like that.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[ceejayoz]

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php

The court granted summary judgment in favor of Google on four independent bases:

Serving a webpage from the Google Cache does not constitute direct infringement, because it results from automated, non-volitional activity by Google servers (Field did not allege infringement on the basis of the making of the initial copy by the Googlebot);

Field's conduct (failure to set a "no archive" metatag; posting "allow all" robot.txt header) indicated that he impliedly licensed search engines to archive his web page;

The Google Cache is a fair use; and

The Google Cache qualifies for the DMCA's 512(b) caching "safe harbor" for online service providers.

All of those would seem to equally apply to Google Images' thumbnails cache.

Re: Devil's Advocate

[Black Parrot]

> So essentially, you're saying the onus is on copyright holder to tell someone not to steal their product?

No, merely to identify it as controlled content.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[xigxag]

The "law" may not work like that, but the Internet works like that. Pretty much all of the content you access on the web is somebody else's content. What gives you the right to go to their web page? To cache their words and graphics on your browser? Their tacit assent, that's what. Now if they suddenly want to say, "You're not allowed to cache my stuff if you're a search engine, or if you are running IE, or if you are from Slashdotistan" that's fine. But they ought to indicate that in advance, not just after the fact decide you should be sued. On the other hand, they could simply not put their stuff on the Internet. Problem solved.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[AlterTick]

So essentially, you're saying the onus is on copyright holder to tell someone not to steal their product? Last time I checked, the law didn't work like that.

Last I checked copyright law had nothing to do with theft.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[RexRhino]

Well, lets say you put your pictures up on a billboard in times square, then tried to sue anyone who published a picture of time square.

The web is PUBLIC. When you put something on the internet, you understand that people are going to use it for things like search engines.

If you don't want them on the web, password protect the pictures... or use a robots.txt file... or whatever.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[raoul666]

Regarding this, do you hold copyright on a work if you don't claim it? I mean, if you don't have a little "Copyright 2006 Raoul666" at the bottom of, say, a web page you write, can you sue someone for infringement if they stumble on it and put it somewhere? I'm genuinely curious.

I'd also argue that google is not stealing their product, or devalueing it in any way. To get the full size image, you must get it from the source. Clicking on the picture leads you to the page it was found. All you get from google is a small pic that gives you the general idea what you're looking at, not incredible detail. I think it's reasonably analagous to displaying a clip from a movie or a sentance from a book, which is generally allowed.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Baricom]

Regarding this, do you hold copyright on a work if you don't claim it? I mean, if you don't have a little "Copyright 2006 Raoul666" at the bottom of, say, a web page you write, can you sue someone for infringement if they stumble on it and put it somewhere? I'm genuinely curious.

It depends on where you live. In the U.S. and many other countries, all works are protected by copyright the moment they are in a tangible form. (Of course, this assumes that the content in question is eligible for copyright anyway. Some works are not.) You don't even need to include the copyright notice.

In the U.S., this is sort of a psuedo-protection - you can sue if somebody makes a copy without your permission, but you are limited in how much you can collect - I believe it's "actual damages", but I don't know for sure. In contrast, that amount can be increased substantially if the work is registered. Last I checked, statuatory damages for a registered work can be up to $150,000 per infringing copy.

Authors also receive copyright protection for works written under a pseudonym (Raul666) or anonymously, but it can be harder to collect money in this case because you have to prove you created the work.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and have no legal training. This isn't legal advice.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[iamwahoo2]

The problem that this all stems from is a basic misunderstanding of what the internet is and some companies wanting to make it into something that it is not. The internet works by copying. That is its' nature. Companies that make money by publishing content want it to be equivalent to going to a store and purchasing a magazine. The problem continues to be further confounded by laws made by individuals who do not understand this basic technology and users who do not understand the true simplicity of the internet.

By putting bits on an internet server, you are by the very nature of the internet requesting that somebody copy your bits. The transfer of bits from one computer to another is the ONLY reason for the internet to exists. It is impossible to restrict or prohibit the copying of bits without breaking the internet protocol.

Re:Devil's Advocate

[Dun Malg]

Attempting to cast copyright infringement, an area of law which includes such vagaries as "fair use", as a simple "right and wrong" like property theft shows your ignorance of law.

This could spell troublle for GooglePrint as well

[Anonymous Coward]

...not that it's not already in trouble.

Thumbnails

[Quixote]

A thumbnail (which Google Image Search displays) is just a downsampled version of the original image.
If it is OK for Google to distribute these, why is it illegal for a person to distribute downsampled versions of WAVe files (aka MP3s)?

Re:Thumbnails

[DeafByBeheading]

If the typical MP3 were downsampled to 8khz/8 bits, I don't think there'd be as much of an issue...

Re:Thumbnails

[Mr2001]

If it is OK for Google to distribute [downsampled versions of original images], why is it illegal for a person to distribute downsampled versions of WAVe files (aka MP3s)?

They aren't analogous. An MP3 file is missing much of the information that's in the original uncompressed audio file, but it's still functionally equivalent to the original; you can listen to it, burn it to a CD, mix it with other songs, etc. and in nearly all cases the differences between the MP3 and the original will be imperceptible. The information that's missing is information that your brain can't detect anyway (if the bitrate is reasonable and your encoder does a good job).

A thumbnail image is also missing much of the information from the original, but it's not functionally equivalent. The information that's missing is information that matters. You can't see nearly as much detail in a 128x102 thumbnail as you can in the 1280x1024 original, which severely limits the usefulness of the thumbnail.

Re:Thumbnails

[DeafByBeheading]

Although, if we're talking about this in light of thumbnails being sold on cell phones, you (grandparent) have a better case. I guess craptastically sampled-down MP3s are being sold as ringtones...

Re:Thumbnails

[publius_jr]

Yours is an important point. Also relevant is the fact that the original images are being publicly displayed, while the orignal songs are not. To make the analogy correct regarding my point, we would need to imagine either Google scanning in images only available in a magazine or a book or the music distributors posting full WAV files for free on their websites.

Re:Thumbnails

[ceoyoyo]

Fair use requires that the copying doesn't significantly affect the commercial viability of the original. Since someone discovered that there are suckers who will actually pay for barely recognizable downsampled versions of songs you can't claim fair use anymore. Apparently people are dumb enough to buy thumbnail porn images too, so they're out. Good thing the consumers haven't been convinced to buy short excerpts from written works yet, so we can still quote things.

Re:Thumbnails

[Twinbee]

Yes, and how about if we downsample an MP3 down to 32, 16 or even 8 kbit sound quality?

Re:Thumbnails

[Mr2001]

Then the analogy works a little better. And, in fact, I bet you'd have an easier time claiming fair use when distributing a poor quality version of a song instead of a 128+ kbps version, since it would have less effect on the market for that song. (Not that you'd have much luck either way.)

Re:Thumbnails

[poot_rootbeer]

The information that's missing is information that your brain can't detect anyway (if the bitrate is reasonable and your encoder does a good job).

What if it isn't and it doesn't?

Would you argue that a 192kbps joint stereo MP3 file is functionally equivalent to the original CD audio, but a 32kbps mono MP3 file is not? Where do we draw the line?

Re:Thumbnails

[Mr2001]

Would you argue that a 192kbps joint stereo MP3 file is functionally equivalent to the original CD audio, but a 32kbps mono MP3 file is not? Where do we draw the line?

Yes, I would argue that, but it's impossible to draw a line since quality is so subjective.

Well, maybe not *impossible* if we stick to defining what isn't a functional equivalent and we don't mind a bit of compromise. I'd say that a musical recording encoded at 96 kbps CBR or lower (i.e. with no frame higher than 96 kbps) is too degraded to be considered equivalent. But that can still vary a lot based on the encoder, and what about WMA, AAC, Vorbis, or whatever format gets invented next?

If I were writing a law that made it legal to make only low quality copies--which I wouldn't, because I believe we all have the right to make and distribute high quality copies--I'd probably just write something about "an obvious and pervasive loss of fidelity" and hope common sense prevailed in the courtroom.

Re:Thumbnails

[aiken_d]

Well, you definitely win your geek merit badge :)

Most people would *not* consdier the functional purpose of nudie pics to be seeing as many pixels of detail as possible. In fact, for many peoples' functional purpose, a thumbnail does just fine.

-b

Why does Google bother with these people...

[HoofArted]

I cannot understand why Google bothers to argue the case with people like this. So you don't want your site images indexed, thats fine, Google should remove ALL references to your site from their index. When you traffic has dropped to the point of your site's death, come back and talk!

Come on Google, you have better things to worry about.

Re:Why does Google bother with these people...

[babbling]

It is rather nice of them, isn't it? If I were Google, I reckon I'd drop them and refuse to re-list them.

Re:Why does Google bother with these people...

[Quixote]

The question is not that Google indexed their site; but that someone else stole their images, and Google indexed the thieves' sites and actively sends traffic to the thieves (not to mention, profits from the AdSense ads displayed at the pirates' sites).

This is not a case of a missing robots.txt file, but of Google actively (debatable...) helping thieves enrich themselves from their theft.

Here's an analogy. Suppose you operate a pawn shop. Someone brings in a stereo to sell. It is your responsibility to make sure it's not stolen. Similarly, it is Google's responsibility (technically it's a nightmare, I agree) to make sure that they are not an accessory in copyright theft.

Re:Why does Google bother with these people...

[JPriest]

It isn't perfect10 that is hosting the images google linked. A third party offers perfect10's images without permission, and google spiders them. Instead of going after fly by night violator perfect10 goes after Google. 5. Profit!

Re:Why does Google bother with these people...

[bersl2]

Good God, how many times are you going to refer to "theft" of copyright? Do you have any idea where you are?

Re:Why does Google bother with these people...

[16K Ram Pack]

But do a classified ad paper have to check that everything for sale is not stolen before an ad goes in?

Do eBay have to check every item before being listed?

On the other hand, both will pull an ad if there reasonable suspicion that the item is stolen, and co-operate with the authorities.

Google aren't be deliberately negligent, or avoiding responsibility.

If I was Google, I'd set their page rank right down. The last thing I'd want is to help support the business of a company out to sue me for something that's basically unavoidable.

Looks like they already fixed it

[ZachPruckowski]

Google image searching site:www.perfect10.com/ brings up 0 images. Also, googling Perfect 10 brings up their site. So it appears they have blocked images and allowed text perfectly fine.

I was using Safari on OS X 10.4.4, with Safe Search off in Private Browsing mode if anyone gets different results somehow. Also checked with Firefox 1.5.0.1 Don't think that that makes a difference.

i see you used the verb "steal"

[circletimessquare]

i'd like to point out to you that the verb "steal" the noun "theft" when applied to electronic media doesn't make any sense, really

being as its just bits, effortlessly copied

not that you aren't alone in your delusions, but the legal world is only beginning to wake up to the nonsense of laws written in the days of the printing press being applied to the internet

it's kind of absurd

Re:i see you used the verb "steal"

[ceoyoyo]

Not to mention that copyright holders do not own the work (thus it cannot be stolen from them). They have been granted the right to control how the work is copied. They do not own the work.

Google should cave in.

[geminidomino]

Of course, if a small typo were to enter into the exceptions database, say instead of http://www.perfect10.com/*.jpg, they were to block http://www.perfect10.com/*, well, hey... at least their images are safe!

You failzor!

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually got FP, so you suxxor.

won't this be ubiquitous soon enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

With any luck companies will get over themselves and realize that these sort of efforts a) annoy users b) clog the legal system with garbage c) attempt to put the internet back to the 90s, d) all of the above?

Think I'm gonna shoot for (d). Will it really matter if they win by the time it actually could happen? Remember that modern internet speeds are as much a result of cacheing as with actual bandwidth increases, stopping a valuable service like the google image search could double backfire if they have something to sell and need to get the word out.

It's been said and said again, but here I go: Most content producers have more to fear from obscurity than piracy.

Re:won't this be ubiquitous soon enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably doesn't care about publicity. Odds are it's just a sham business so he can bone some hot wannabe models.

Local cache

[Lord Barrabas]

By the same logic, am I 'thieving' when my browser caches or displays their images? The only difference is that google is passing the images on, and I'm not. IANAL, is that difference critical?

Also by the same logic, am I thieving when I access text on their site? Is google breaking copyright when it provides the first sentence or so from each result on a search?

RTF Search Notes!

[Firehed]

Image may be scaled down and subject to copyright.

Not "Thumbnail (C) 2006 Google, original (C) whoever actually owns it."

This is like being sued by a museum because you remember what a painting looks without having bought another ticket.

Re:RTF Search Notes!

[kfg]

This is like being sued by a museum because you remember what a painting looks without having bought another ticket.

Well no, as per the actual complaint, rather than the Slashdot blurb, it is like being sued by a private museum because someone went into the museum, made a perfect copy of the painting while they were there, displaying the copy elsewhere so people don't have to buy a ticket to the museum, being paid for each person who visits the display and giving Google a cut of the procedes for managing the money.

Perfect 10 is a subscription porn site.If clicking on the thumbnail simply sent people to Perfect 10 there would be no complaint.

KFG

Re:RTF Search Notes!

[Anonymous Coward]

If clicking on the thumbnail simply sent people to Perfect 10 there would be no complaint.

Have you ever even USED google image search? Because that's pretty much what it does.

Re:RTF Search Notes!

[kfg]

Have you ever even USED google image search?

Yes, I have.

Because that's pretty much what it does.

No, it isn't; and that's why they're pissed off.

KFG

Eh?

[JordanL]

But a victory could hamstring image search, along with video and audio search services.

Took a break from WoW to bring us this interesting news?

Re:Eh?

[Grech]

That the WoW people may have borrowed the concept (disclosure: I don't play World of Warcraft, nor have I ever) doesn't make this use of the verb any less legitimate. People have been hamstringing each other from the moment Thug saw Og get bit in the back of the leg, and Thug figured out that maybe that's why Og couldn't walk so well anymore.

Perfect 10?

[Viperlin]

But She Wears a 12.............

Hold on one sec

[gargletheape]

So basically these Charlies sue Google because other websites pirate their content, and some of these have (gasp!) Google ads. Wow.

And in any case, since when did it become necessary for a search engine to know that its searches link to content that violates someone's copyrights? I mean, even the RIAA wouldn't sue Google just because I can do searches like:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q= -inurl%3Ahtm+-inurl%3Ahtml+intitle%3A%22index+of%2 2+mp3+%22pearl+jam%22&btnG=Searchthis.

(Not that they wouldn't like to try...)

All Google needs to do is to remove links to infringing sites when these are brought to its notice, and even there it is allowed to display the actual complaint with the list of bad URL's.

Re:Hold on one sec

[calculi]

I'm under the impression they're suing Google because their images show up in image search results, not because other websites pirate the content and contain Google ads.

Re:Hold on one sec

[gargletheape]

I think google tried to claim fair use on indexing content and was denied because of the AdSense ads, which makes all this commercial activity.

Basically I'm not certain the judge really understood the technical aspects of the case particularly well...look how many Slashdotters keep babbling about robots.txt

speaking of passwords...

[johnny cashed]

Funny story. Years ago, I paid for the "short time trial membership" (I don't remember, 2 days? 3 days?, whatever it was) that cost like $3 for the Perfect 10 website. This would only allow you to access a certain portion of the website. But who ever did the website allowed directory views such that if you knew what you were doing, you could access all the photos on the website (and by "knew what you were doing" I mean a really trivial use of backspace in the URL line, definately could not be considered "hacking"). So I went through and got all the images at the time, all for the cost of a "trial" membership (and much less that the cost of a single printed copy of Perfect 10). So either Perfect 10 wasn't very web savvy at the time, or the guys who did run the website knew what they were doing and didn't care. I'm suprised Perfect 10 is still around. I've purchased exactly 1 copy of the magazine. While the women are pretty enough, the rest of the magazine wasn't very interesting. Boring. At least it wasn't full of crappy adverts for phone sex lines. Here is an interesting tidbit on Perfect 10 and lawsuits: http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/001748.html

Playboy, at least, could be considered an interesting magazine in itself even without the nude pictures (though not nearly as popular). Then again, I haven't read Playboy in years.

Watermark ?

[Foddrick]

What if google offered a watermarking app that allowed you to easily watermark an image that flagged it for do not index ? It would need to resist removal.

Stupid Question?

[pookemon]

I wonder if Google looked to see how Perfect 10's site got listed on Google? I mean if Perfect 10 registered their site then that should be seen as permission to create the thumbnails and list them in the image search.

It's pretty dumb really. While I can understand that Perfect 10 might be worried that they'll lose revenue because Google is creating thumbnails that could be downloaded by users onto their phones, Google will probably respond by removing Perfect 10 from it's database altogether. I think that'd probably have more of an effect than the thumbnails.

The really dumb thing is that my phone, as I expect most others do, came with software that would take the "large" image and turn it into an image that is perfectly scaled for display on it's screen. So the only real issue is if you can get the images through WAP and store them on your phone that way. Of course no one has enough money to download image searches on google through their phone - except maybe the ppl @ Google. Or maybe Bill Gates. And Steve Jobs. And John Carmack. And so on...

Re:Stupid Question?

[mcubed]

I wonder if Google looked to see how Perfect 10's site got listed on Google?

What difference does it make how Perfect 10 got listed on Google? The issue is that Google is displaying thumbnails of images located on other websites -- images that belong to Perfect 10, that those other websites stole from Perfect 10.

Michael

Re:Stupid Question?

[pookemon]

That was the half of the claim that was denied by the court.

"Matz didn't buy Perfect 10's argument that search engines' practice of linking to infringing content or showing the infringing content within frames below a search result constituted direct infringement on their part."

RTFA

people missing the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

people posting about robot files don't understand the issue. Perfect 10 does block Google's web crawler. it is other sites that have stolen Pefect 10 images (by paying for an online subscription and then pillaging the site's images), and then Google Image Search indexes those sites, creates thumbnails of the stolen images, links to them, and then generates literally hundreds of millions of dollars from AdSense revenue.

Re:people missing the issue

[BinaryOpty]

So why aren't they going after the sites that stole them, thus enabling Google to index them?

Re:people missing the issue

[Dillusionary]

Because it's not about all that. It's about $$. This IS the US, and thats how we do it here! Just like Chris Rock said: "I was looking for god my whole life, and he was in my pocket!!". Our money says "in God we trust".

Re:Second Post! YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

that Google directly infringes its copyright by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs

Does this mean the law also applies to the very Google, best friend of FOSS-monkeys and pedophiles alike?

Did you read TFA?

[Saanvik]

Read TFA. If Perfect 10 allowed Google to index their website there would be no case. The fact that your search returned no hits is favourable to Perfect 10.

Here's the case in a nutshell. Perfect 10's copyrighted images are being appropriated by others. Google indexes them and displays the thumbnails of them. Since Perfect 10 didn't give Google permission to display those images (as you noted in your post, they don't allow Google to index their images), when Google displays the thumbnails they are, under our current copyright laws, breaking the law.

This is similar to the case brought against Kinko's for creating coursepacks (see Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corporation. Kinko's made partial copies of course material and sold it to students. Kinko's believed these coursepacks were allowed by educational fair use rules. Kinko's, like Google in this case, didn't make complete copies. They only copied pieces of the material to help students get to the heart of the material. Google doesn't copy the entire copyrighted image, just enough to get the important part. The courts ruled against Kinko's, and the judge here said it's likely the courts will also rule against Google.

The biggest difference is, in the case against Kinko's, they were the ones taking direct action. The Kinko's case would apply more directly if someone had come to Kinko's and said, "Hey, we've got these great coursebooks for sale. If you point people our way, by giving away the first five pages with a link to us, we'll give you five cents for each copy we sell. You have to make copies of the first five pages yourself, though."

There are some other differences, too. Kinko's directly profited, whereas Google only indirectly profits (from advertising). The judge agreed that that part of the case is weak. But you don't have to make money to be infringing a copyright. That may help Google avoid paying as much in damages, but that's about all it means.

Re:Did you read TFA?

[Kordmp]

The only part of the argument that is weak is that Kinko's took a known copyrighted material and made a decision that although they knew they didn't have permission from the owner to copyright, that it was covered under fair use. In Googles case, Google took copyrighted material from a sight which was illegally portraying the image as their copyrighted work, and then made copies of it, which at this point is completely legal. Now if their was an obvious way or means that Google could have known it wasn't their work or if they had been notified and took no action after it was obvious(definition for a court to decide), then Google is at fault. Up until that point Google has acted in good faith.

Only one problem

[TubeSteak]

Watermarking images is a good idea, but not a secure one.

If Google provides a program, it will either be reverse-engineered or blackbox tested. Either way, an automated tool will pop up that can remove/distort the watermark.

Also, who wants to Google Brand their porn pics? If the watermark is non-visible, that just makes it easier to distort/remove.

Critical eliment..

[peterfa]

I know I'm probably beating the horse a bit but... Google Adsense is a service and not a partnership. Those that pirate Perfect 10 and have Adsense are not partners, they are costumers. Therefor, Perfect 10 is full of shit.

Re:Critical eliment..

[gonkem]

I'm looking at the Perfect 10 site and I'm not seeing a whole lot of costumes! :P

Re:Critical eliment..

[peterfa]

Those are GUYS!! :D

Shut up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Shut up.

[Dun Malg]

shut up

No, YOU shut up, fucktard. My point is valid and relevant. The original poster attempted to cast a very nebulous matter of copyright infringement, an area of law with vast gray areas, as a crime of property theft, which is very black and white. He's a dumbass. i don't care if you're sick of hearing it, shit like this needs to be pointed out.

A non-SFW warning would be nice

[MarkChovain]

Hmm.. I just decided to take a look at what this "perfect10.com" site is all about, and my boss walked by at that exact moment. I don't know what other people's employers are like with their web-surfing policies, but I am the tech guy for the head-office of a women's rights lobby group, and our policies are pretty clear. What I'm wondering is, is there any way for me the vote of confidence I would say that there are a tool, folks?

Re:A non-SFW warning would be nice

[Lord Kano]

I am the tech guy for the head-office of a women's rights lobby group

What does that have to do with anything? Don't women have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies(Like posing nude)?

LK

Re:A non-SFW warning would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. Didn't you RTFA (of course not this is Slashdot). First sentence begins "Adult publisher Perfect 10....". Obviously not work safe.

And what the hell happened in that last sentence of yours? Half your brain shut down while writing it?

Re:A non-SFW warning would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm wondering is, is there any way for me the vote of confidence I would say that there are a tool, folks?

What?

Have their cake and eat it too

[rainman_bc]

So on the one hand, Perfect 10 wants high ranking with google, and OTOH they don't want their images in google's search.

AFAIK, google respects robots.txt, and if they added one to their site, google wouldn't index those images.

It's not explicitly stated, but if you want google to index your site, you should expect to play by their rules. You can explicitly tell them not to spider your site and they'll respect that.

Go to hell, you First-Post-Coat-Tail moocher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to hell, you First-Post-Coat-Tail moocher.

Let's be blunt about this

[Anonymous Coward]

District Court Judge A. Howard Matz, clearly has shit for brains. Wait! Please hear me out.

The whole point of image search is to display thumbnails. Matz has clearly never done an image search, because if he did, he'd realise its a bit hard to do an image search without it. The man is clearly a computer illiterate moron. He claims image thumbnails aren't "Fair Use." Hey, Matz, even the biggest loser (and this clearly includes you) couldn't jack off at a 64*64 pixel thumbnail. Well, maybe you could... Sigh.

Matz. The US Patent Office. God help us.

I for one am glad....

[bmvaughn]

....that Slashdot recognizes my ability to get pirated porn under the heading "Your Rights Online."

No, they have done nothing.

[gold23]

And you are searching using the wrong term.

Try http://images.google.com/images?svnum=100&hl=en&lr =&newwindow=1&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=site%3Awww.perfe ct10.com&btnG=Search

This search, using the term "site:www.perfect10.com" (without the slash) returns "about 122" results.

It works because there is no robots.txt file on the Perfect 10 site. See http://www.perfect10.com/robots.txt. It's 404, baby.

So really, they need to implement robots.txt, and tell Googlebot-images to go away. Oh, and quit whining.

Parent Modded Down?

[JordanL]

Wow... I was just making a joke at wording... damn you WoWers are sensetive.

Re:Parent Modded Down?

[barefootgenius]

Ah yes, the WoWers that be.

Sorry, offtopic I know.

This judgement would work in Google's favour

[Captain Lou]

At first glance, the obvious implication is that any search of an image, movie, or other sort of file is gutted, making Google (and any other search engine) useless for this kind of search. Other people can speculate on what that sort of Google would look like, but I see the possibility of the opposite effect: Imagine Google is where say everyone on the internet goes to search for data, like images etc., but Google cannot display every image that may exist because it would be a copyright infringment. Users, when searching for copyrighted material would first search google, then have to search up countless individual sites, and then search each of those sites individually in order to find whatever image they need. Given people are generally lazy, they will first peruse the results that Google returned directly, then failing that, would then go on to look at site after site in turn. Whoever's images are returned directly by Google as a result of a search will have a competative advantage over those sites that do not have their images returned by Google. Site owners would obviously want their images to be at the top of Googles results. But now beacuse of this ruling, each site would have to grant Google access to their images to be included. With enough Sites "asking" Google to be included in what was before a free service, Google would make the obvious business decision and charge for that service, whatever the market would bare. Google would morph from being a sort of "white pages", where everyone is included automatically, to a "yellow pages" where access is charged for. Instead of harming Google, a judgement like this would simply give them a new revenue stream, and a method of locking out competing search engines by locking in sites into exclusive contracts with Google. Just speculation, but neither outcome is appealing.

Re:This judgement would work in Google's favour

[Captain Lou]

Sorry, forgot formatting.

Re:Second Post! YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another wingnut pissed off that Google won't give his site devoted to monkey pedophiles a high rating.

The REAL question is...

[syberanarchy]

...in 2006, who the fuck is dumb enough to PAY for jerk off material? :p

On topic, Google can't possibly be held responsible for the actions of these sites. That's like the RIAA/MPAA forcing them to remove all links to any warez sites.

Of course, I may just be giving them ideas...

Re:The REAL question is...

[Landaras]

On topic, Google can't possibly be held responsible for the actions of these sites

The preliminary injunction related to Google directly infringing by making the thumbnail. The judge felt the Fair Use analysis was close but ultimately tipped in Perfect 10's favor. This was largely because P10 had started selling the thumbnails for viewing on cell phones, and so Google's thumbnails were serving as a market substitute in that respect.

The vicarious and contributory liability theories ("the actions of these [other] sites") were found to be largely without merit.

- Neil Wehneman

Re:The REAL question is...

[syberanarchy]

But Google's image search doesn't check to see if a site is acting legally. It simply indexes what it finds. If Perfect 10 wants to sue someone, they should sue the people putting those pictures up to be indexed/thumbnailed in the first place. It's not the job of a search engine that crawls millions of pages a day to figure out if every site it indexes is respecting your copyrights.

Re:The REAL question is...

[Landaras]

Disclaimer: I believe Google is in the right here, but am just trying to explain what the judge ruled.

What you are confusing here are direct infringement (the making of the thumbnails) and vicarious / contributory infringement (which is where other sites do direct infringement and Google simply links to them). The judge ruled that the claims against Google for contributory and vicarious infringement were largely without merit, and denied an injunction. However, the claim that Google directly infringed by making the thumbnail had some merit to it, enough to get an injunction.

Perfect 10 is still able to sue the sites that are directly infringing by putting up full-size copies. In fact, I believe they are suing those sites. But as a preliminary matter Google's making of the thumbnail was determined to be an infringement as well.

- Neil Wehneman

Stop and read this!

[MaelstromX]

90% of the comments you'll find below, many of them moderated +5 insightful, are based in a misunderstanding of the issue. This has nothing to do with Perfect10 not wanting Google Image Search to index the images on its web site. It has to do with Perfect10 not wanting Google to index images to which it holds the copyright, and which others have stolen and placed on their own sites.

Why hold Google responsible? Apparently because they sell images of similar resolution to the thumbnails for mobile phones, so in this regard they think Google is hosting unauthorized copies of mobile phone-type images. The judge agrees, though I don't.

(Sorry for not posting anonymously, I can't do so now since I've apparently gotten too much negative moderation in my recent non-troll AC posts.)

Re:Stop and read this!

[Anonymous Coward]

why the fuck did you reply in a "first post" thread? your comment is totally out of place

Re:Stop and read this!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a vulgar way to get his comment shown at the top for people who use the nested view.

its just research

[cvos]

now we all have the excuse of oogling perfect 10's products while claiming to fight for online freedom and an open internet. Why Google images when you can Oogle them

Obligatory...

[brainnolo]

Perfect 10, you may have won a battle. But remember, in Soviet Russia, Google sues you!

Thumbnails are excerpts, and therefore OK

[SgtChaireBourne]

How is an image search substantially different than a text search?

They are displaying the entire copyrighted work not an excerpt.

You're missing some basic concepts there. A thumbnail is by definition an excerpt. If you don't believe me, check for yourself:

• Check the number of bytes in your original image and compare it to your thumbnail.
• Check the number of pixels (height x width) in your original image and compare it to your thumbnail.

You'll find that the numbers are not even close by even an order of magnitude, the size (in pixels) diminishes geometrically. That's not even counting trimming back color channels or even the number of colors per channel. Dimensions # pixels
150 200 30k
300 400 120k
600 800 480k
1200 1600 1920k

Easy solution...

[poptones]

Watermark all the thumbnails. Google could put a big "Gooogle" watermark across every one of its thumbnails and it would not degrade the usability of the image search itself. It would, however, pretty much destroy the value of the thumbnails as cellphone wallpaper.

Re:Easy solution...

[sakshale]

Watermark all the thumbnails.

That was my reaction also. If Google placed a watermark across the image, such that it would no longer be of value, then there would be no issue. However, instead of saying "Google", I would recommend watermarking it with the domainname that it was pulled from. Thus, if it was pulled from the real company, they would get the "free advertising" that Google claims is a benefit to them. If, on the other hand, it was pulled from a site with an illegal copy, it would point the copyright holder at that site, instead of at Google.

About time too

[squoozer]

I know that I'm not the only producer of content that is fed up with the way search engines (Google in particular) can get away with republishing our work and not paying for it. I 110% support fair use and I think a little context snippet with the search result constitutes fair use. I don't, however, feel that caching an entire page and allowing people to view it constitues fair use. In the RW (and I know normally RW analogies don't work very well but I think they do here) it would be the equivalent of reproducing an entire article from a magazine or news paper. I am 100% certain you would be sued if you tried that.

The only two arguments people who support caching seem to be able to give is that: 1) Google makes it clear that it is not the producer of the content 2) It's good for "humanity" because if the site goes down the content is still accessible. As for the first - I don't care if they attribute it to me they didn't write it and I didn't give them permission to publish it. The second is just laughable - it is a defence that could be used to just take any and all work off producers.

Re:About time too

[Alsee]

I don't, however, feel that caching an entire page and allowing people to view it constitues fair use.

That is an arguable point, but irrelevant.

I could be mistaken, but I do not believe Google is relying on any Fair Use defence for their caching operation.

I believe that Google is explicitly making use of a provision written into copyright law that explictly says that caching of content under certain strict rules does not constitute copyright infringment. Many companies run transparent caches between their internal network and the outside world. Many ISPs run transparent caches for their networks. When one person on AOL accesses a static webpage on gardening, there is absolutely no reason for AOL to generate and receive duplicate outbound and inbound internet traffic when a dozen other AOL users all request the same page over the next sixty seconds. It would be pointless and stupid and harmful to request and repeatedly retrieve the same exact data a dozen or more times in a single minute. Using caching cuts down on internet traffic and it increases response speed if the page can be re-served from AOL's local machines.

Google has their cache service arranged slightly differently than AOL's cache, AOL's chache is a transparent cache whereas Google's is an explicit visible caching mechanism, but I believe that it is configured to fall under the same provision of law.

Permitting caching is almost a requirment for the smooth running of various aspects of the existing established internet. Googles isn't really doing anything fundamentally or technologically different than what hundreds of ISP's already do.... Google is just making it explicitly visible.

So you can forget any Fair Use arguments. This has nothing to do with Fair Use. If you think what Google is doing is wrong then I think you need to lobby congress to change the law to eliminate this explicit copyright caching exemption. Then and only then would Google need to present a Fair Use case to defend such operations. Which as I said is an arguable point - easily arguable on both sides.

-

Re:About time too

[squoozer]

That's a very good point and well made but a transparent ISP cache and what Google is doing are quite different. Googles cache contains pages that were removed months or even years ago - an ISPs cache could contain very old pages but generally doesn't. Googles cache, or at least the display of the cached information, modifies the content - a banner across the top, keyword highlighting and a reduced number of adverts if you use AdWords.

I'm not against caching - I'm against the specific way Google uses it's cache. If an end user couldn't tell that the content was coming from Googles server farm rather than my clapped out old box then I wouldn't have a problem with it as I don't lose out (in the same way I don't have a problem with transparent ISP caches). If I lose out - I have a problem with it.

Re:About time too

[Alsee]

a transparent ISP cache and what Google is doing are quite different.

The basic mechanisms involved are the same, and I have just read through this judge's ruling and he does explicitly refer to Google operating under this statutory exemption.

The statute places strict limits to define a "cache" system, but the statute needed to be broad enough to cover a variety of technologies and variations and unanticipated developments in caching. I'm not saying that statutory definition is perfect, merely that Google appears to be within those bounds, and those bounds were the legislature's best effort at defining acceptable caching. Any flaw would be a legislative flaw, and any fix would be a legislative fix.

Googles cache contains pages that were removed months or even years ago

As I understand it Google refreshes/expires the cache a chunck at a time as it recrawls the web. Yes this means the cache can be a few months old, but seriously doubt it ever reaches "years". And it's about as fast as fast as reasonably possible for that sort of mechanism.

If an end user couldn't tell that the content was coming from Googles server farm rather than my clapped out old box then I wouldn't have a problem with it as I don't lose out

I don't understand. How do you lose out merely because the user is aware that it is cached? Do you somehow lose out if I, a technical user, am aware of the fact that AOL's system is serving me from their cache? Is there any circumstance where you are claiming a tangible loss?

And if for any reason you do feel you are "losing out", well one of the conditions of the statute is that Google must obey things industry standard mechanisms for controlling such caching, such as robots.txt. If you have any problem you can just tag your site not to be cached by Google or anyone else.

-

Re:About time too

[squoozer]

I was aware of the ruling that Google was within the guidelines (at least in the US). Doesn't mean I have to agree with it though :o) and I feel the judge failed to understand the subtle difference between transparent and non-transparent caches.

As for tangible loss there is, at least potentially, some. Pages in Googles cache are treated by the Google AdSense system as completely independent from the orignating site. The AdSense system is weighted such that popular sites get more and better (paying) ads than less popular sites which of course makes perfect sense from a business point of view. The down side for me however is that because the cached page is treated separately it doesn't benifit from my sites popularity and therefore doesn't get anywhere near the same number of nor quality of adverts. Anyone viewing the cached page is essentially a lost customer to me.

I admit that my loss is probably tiny but it is there and multiplied by all the people that are losing out this way it potentially adds up to big numbers. Hopefully it is now clear how Googles cache is fundamentally different to a transparent ISP cache and how content producers can lose out. The ISP cache doesn't reduce my income the Google cache can / does.

It's not so much the monetary loss that makes me cross, because it's probably small, it's the principal of the thing. By saying that this is acceptible under the caching clause it is giving anyone permission to simply copy and re-display any website. They would simply have to claim that what they are displaying is a cached copy. Further more, Google modify the cached content (highlighting, less ads and often different styles) so what's to stop people copying a page claiming it's a cached version and simply inserting their own ads or content. After all Google can modify a page so why can't everyone?

Surely this is Perfect 10's problem

[harryman100]

Can't they just use a robots.txt to prevent google from indexing the images? If google can get at the content (without paying) then surely so can anyone else anyway.

If they don't want it on google. Don't allow google to index it - there are many ways of doing this (don't link to it publically, etc...) If the issue comes from pirated sites, and google indexing them - that's not googles problem, if anything they provide a very useful way for perfect 10 to find the pirated sites.

Why the fuck is this even in a courtroom? Am I entirely mis-understanding their point?

duhbull standhards?

[Anonymous Coward]

anything that 'interfere's' with yet another felonious stock markup FraUD billyonerrors' claim to EVERYTHING is now known as 'hamstringing'? whereas, when megasloth assimilates the efforts of some little guise, it's prior 'art', to be marketdead in some payperview fashion by the execrabilious wons. talk (or don't as the case may be) about an upside DOWn kingdumb?

of course, it's always been that weigh?

vote with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, &, as always, lookout bullow.

Going to have to disagree on the second part.

[FoamingToad]

Firstly, I have had a number of experiences where webpages have been either taken down through the loss of the originating server or occasionally due to legal threats (in particular, Charlie Brooker's rant in the Guardian a year or so back was saved by Googlecache prior to a number of fansites carrying the piece). From this aspect I have to agree that the cache has proven useful in providing access to content that is no longer accessible.

My second reason for being particularly happy with caching from search engines is that it's proven handy in bypassing the web-filtering applied within my current organisation. There are fairly heavy restrictions on anything even slightly related to IT Security (for reasons of bureaucracy rather than any informed decision about content) and without the cache, Secunia and Whitedust would be unavailable to me.

Re:Going to have to disagree on the second part.

[squoozer]

I'm not arguing that the cache isn't sometimes useful I am saying that Google has taken without asking. They have assumed that content producers want their content cached. Some of us would rather it wasn't. I know that meta tags can be added to stop Google caching the page but that isn't really the point.

What you are suggesting is that the author of a work relinquishes the right to stop publishing a work once it has been published once. The article in the Guardian you mention is owned by the Guardian. Surely you support their right to no longer publish it if they choose not to? It may be of some worth to "the people" but does that give them the right to reproduce it without paying for it? Would you say that is it accetable to photocopy a book because it is hard to get hold of?

As for using it as a means to by-pass filtering - again it's useful but I don't think that's a reason to allow widespread copying of other peoples work.

My biggest gripe with the system is that I make money from the work I produce. Not a lot but some. That money comes from adverts on the pages. The cached version of the pages don't show as many adverts or adverts that are as well targeted ergo I make less money from the same content and can do very little about it.

what's next, jpeg drm?

[curious.corn]

it's a clear case for tcpa! Yay, watch your mega cpu fold as it continuously decrypts images and monitors keystrokes for unlicensed or unapproved use of words and trademarks in your text! Slower than a Norton infection, but the chinese filter will be put to shame. In corporatist west the pc monitors YOU!

This only hurts Perfect 10

[harl]

Perfect 10 wins suit. Perfect 10 no longer has images on the search engines. Perfect 10 receives less traffic since people can't tell what's on their site. Less people sign up for the sight or buy the magazine. Revenew goes down.

Congrats you've protected your IP but lowered your revenue stream. Good job! *applause*

Why not just spoil?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

The big issue in the thumbnail half of the case is that some thumbnails correspond exactly to images available (for a fee) for download onto mobile phones. Which I think is a fair point.

To keep everybody happy then, not just perfect 10, wouldn't it be a simple matter for Google just to spoil thumbnails by overprinting them with (for example) "subject to copyright"?

That way you still get do a meaningful search via the thumbnails but you don't get a high quality pic.

Wouldn't that be a reasonable, sensible solution for everyone concerned?

Why would they ever care about thumbnails?

[cthellis]

Thumbnail images are nothing but ADVERTISING for them. It's not like anyone would be satisfied looking at a hot woman in an 80x120 image. I mean, the breasts only take up 60 pixels total!

It does, however, provide just enough to... tittilate.

Re:Why would they ever care about thumbnails?

[SirLanse]

Perfect 10 SELLS thumbnails to phone users.

It's simply amazing

[edmicman]

that 95% of the comments revolve around "just make a robots.txt" file and be done with it! St00pid perfect10!! Even if you don't read the damn article, at least glance at the comments to see that it's not about Google caching the images from p10, or image search, but about Google linking to sites that pirated the images!

Can we get a big bold clarification in the summary? God I hate stupidity...

Re:It's simply amazing

[SheeEttin]

Then why are you here?

caching can be disabled

[jasonhamilton]

Google will read your page for some meta tags and will not cache your pages if you request it not to.

Re:caching can be disabled

[squoozer]

Do you expect the author of a book to go round to everyone with a printing press and tell them he would rather they didn't reprint his book? Copyright assumes that copying is not allowed unless permission is given. What you are suggesting is the total opposite. It's like running a firewall with default allow and then individually blocking the bad guys totally back-to-front.

Re:caching can be disabled

[Pentagram]

Do you expect the author of a book to go round to everyone with a printing press and tell them he would rather they didn't reprint his book?

That's not a fair analogy. You only have to create one file to stop Google indexing your site. It's the digital equivalent of printing "please do not copy this book" on the publication (which though not required is in effect done by most publishers).

Anyway, you're being silly. People usually only look at the cache if the original site is unavailable. I'm sure you get several orders of magnitude more visitors to your site following Google searches than you lose through people visiting the cache.

Re:caching can be disabled

[squoozer]

One file or a million files makes no difference. The way copyright currently works means that content may not be copied unless permission is given. You don't even need to put (c) on a work to enforce copyright - it's only recommended that you do.

Whether people view the cached copy or not is irrelevant. If anyone does view it Google has published the work without permission. They may only be a few pages for each site viewed each month but multiply that by the billion or so sites Google probably has cached and you have a big problem.

Personally, I use the cache quite a lot as I find the search phrase highlighting useful. I still don't think that is a reason to allow Google to side step copyright law though.

For the analogy prone among us.

[Churla]

There are a ton of partially applying analogies people are using for this. When it comes down to it the perfect10 site has copyrighted images. Other sites are stealing them and displaying them, along with Google ads. This would mean Google is potentially making money off stolen goods. For the analogy prone, this is why pawn shops get in trouble when they sell stolen merchandise.

If I go into the local pawn shop and purchase a PDA, I fire it up and discover it belonged to someone else, a little research further shows that it was stolen from them and sold to the pawn shop. The pawn shop will get in trouble and be obliged to pass on identifying information about whoever sold it. In the case of Google they are advertising where you can go find stolen goods. There is a reason you don't see lots of ads for places selling possibly stolen goods in the newspaper. (Another favorite badly turned analogy.. "Google as a newspaper")

The real beef of the suit from what I read was that since the thumbnails are approximately the same size as the version of the photos sold to users for their cel phones then it is stealing potential revenue from the copyright holder, which is at the core of why you get a copyright.

The actual opinion, maybe?

[Rydia]

Okay, so I actually read the opinion, at The court's site. The substance of it is that there's no question that google is infringing a copyright (makes sense), because it is redisplaying images that are strictly for sale, and while the images are smaller, P10 itself sells images of that size, and the smaller resolution is still a form of reproduction. Google tries to rely on fair use, but fails because the court considered a "consumptive use" because google's ad service renders furnishing the image a commercial use, and since the reproduction is essentially identical to the image (though smaller), and the smaller image is actual for sale on the site. It's pretty much a slam-dunk for P10.

People on /. need a heaping helping of knowing what the law means. (Hint: It's not "what my favorite company is doing is fine" or "what I think is right")

Re:The actual opinion, maybe?

[robertjw]

The law is a living changing thing. Just because something is 'law' today doesn't mean it will be on the books tomorrow. The law is definitely subject to popular opinion.

Most of us who have images on our sites would LOVE for Google to index them. For those that don't want their images, videos or pages indexed there is a simple workaround called robots.txt. Perfect 10 isn't looking for protection from the law. They aren't upset about Google infringing on their copyright, they just want to cash in.

Re:The actual opinion, maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Images.google.com does not display advertisements. At least, I sure as hell don't see any there. By all means give a URL proving me wrong on this point. There is no automatic test which can determine if a particular image is "for sale"--all Google's bots can ever know is "where did I find this image" and "did that webserver allow me to have a copy of it" (the answer to which must be "yes" for it to have the image, obviously).

2) Thumbnails are generally considered a "transformative use" -- unfortunately, being a purely mechanical reproduction, apparently these plaintiffs sell the same transformation for mobile phones. That said, Google's are created independently. Frankly, any business centered around selling worthless crap for mobile phones seems like a total scam to me, but that's my personal bias. I'm still mortified by crap like those "text a message to ##### to get funny jokes! only $1/day!." Aside from the seemingly billions of such jokes (which aren't even funny) that people insist on forwarding to me each day, there are another few billion free sites already doing that. $1/day is a total scam. Honestly, pay-for porn sites that offer mere pictures are really another sort of scam. There's so much free out there as to make the rest worthless already.

3) This sort of thing has been found to be a "fair use" in the past. In particular, I refer you to the ruling on Google's web page cache. This is especially true because it provides a useful service for the world at large.

4) Google's source for the images was other sites who were infringing upon the plaintiff's copyright. Frankly, they should sue them if anyone--the direct infringers and not ancillary ones.

IMHO, they should either:
* Block ALL access to any of plaintiff's sites from Google.
* Move images.google.com and/or Google itself to another country with less restrictive copyright laws.
* All of the above.

But then again, I freely admit to being openly hostile to the notion of IP. And yes, that means giving away my own works, which I could elect to copyright, for free (as in beer).

completely lame

[nazsco]

They are suing people from taking photographs of their shop window!

And besides, there are know standards to forbid that

echo "Disallow: *.gif" > robots.txt

Done! ...morons.

This is More About Adsense

[magixman]

It is one thing to simply point people to infringing material through organic search results. It is quite another to enter into a financial arrangement with an infringing party. Some reasonable due diligence is warranted here by Google and I think that is where Perfect 10 have a legitimate case.

I think Google is quite vulnerable here because they automate so much and would have to have an army of people to police content. Since this is a money making part of their business they need to factor that in just like hosting companies have to factor in the policing of sites and responding to DMCA complaints against parties with which they engage in contractual relationships.

robots.txt

[_iris]

A co-worker of mine runs a photography business on the side. One of the photos he put on his website (of cinnamon sticks) was lifted by some cooking magazine to use as the centerpiece of their website. He emailed them, notifying them that the image was under copyright. They took the image down and replied that "It was on Google's image search", implying that they thought everything on Google's image search is free for the taking. Instead of bringing suit against Google or the magazine, my co-worker simply added a robots.txt to prevent the images from being indexed. End of problem.

Re:robots.txt

[Winterblink]

Which is great for covering your own site, but doesn't stop Google from finding it on that person's site that takes the photos and puts them up. In the case of Perfect 10, say someone has a gallery up of Perfect 10 photos they'd found. Google Search will still find them there if the site's indexed.

Re:robots.txt

[winwar]

"Which is great for covering your own site, but doesn't stop Google from finding it on that person's site that takes the photos and puts them up."

Which means you should go after the site that posted them. And then tell google that the photos are infringing. Then it would be reasonable to expect them to be removed.

Unfortunately, in reality it is virtually impossible to control images once they leave your site and make them usable at the same time. It sucks, but that's life....

offtopic:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your internet connection gratis?

Robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't perfect 10 and any other sites just spend the 10 minutes it would take to put their web directory structures in the robots.txt file and disallow Google and any other engines from crawling their site? I'd rather use technology vs. lawyers?

They really don't want to be found

[InsaneProcessor]

Perfect10 are idiots in this case. By suing over this, they will ruin their own chance of even being indexed by search engines and therefore loose traffice. What morons!

"wend"

[Tired_Blood]

Perfect 10's copyright infringement case may take years to wend its way through the courts.

Oh man, too much VB programming... but the crazy thing is that the sentence still works.

Re:"wend"

[Anonymous Coward]

Undeniable proof that learning even a single reserved word of VB will destroy your brain.

YHBT. HAND.

[Just Some Guy]

His username is awfully familiar, and his journal entry pretty much clenches the deal.

Not linking to actual site

[SeanDuggan]

If clicking on the thumbnail simply sent people to Perfect 10 there would be no complaint.
Have you ever even USED google image search? Because that's pretty much what it does.
{facepalms} Except that Google Image isn't getting the pictures from Perfect10. They're getting them from copycat sites that have these images. Quite honestly, since there's nothing identifying these photos as being by Perfect 10, I don't really see where the issue is with Google. If Perfect 10 wasnts their photos not displayed, they need to be protecting their copyright by attacking these copycat sites, not Google, who simply does a machine-based search that happens to give Perfect 10 a chance to actually find these copycats to prosecute them.

Of course, Google has more money, so who do you think they're going to sue?

How do you determine?

[SeanDuggan]

Google tries to rely on fair use, but fails because the court considered a "consumptive use" because google's ad service renders furnishing the image a commercial use, and since the reproduction is essentially identical to the image (though smaller), and the smaller image is actual for sale on the site. It's pretty much a slam-dunk for P10.
The question is, how is Google to know if a particular image is being sold in thumbnail form? These images weren't even taken off of Perfect 10's website. I could, perhaps, a list of "blacklisted" images based on some kind of heuristics of the image, but to do it right would be computationally intense and to do it simply would either result in too many false positives or too many false negatives.

Personally, I think a watermark of some sort added by Google would work fairly well. Nothing actually mentioning their name, so as to avoid the appearance of attribution, but the word "THUMBNAIL" written across it, or somesuch.

Get it in context people!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so the nerds here can get it right...
The issue here is comparable to Google linking to Warez.

Robots?

[supabeast!]

Can robots.txt be configured to disallow crawling images? Because I'm getting the impression that if it can, this case should be thrown out with Perfect 10 ordered to use robots.txt, and if it can't, then the standard needs updating to stop cases like this from going forward in the future.

Re:Robots?

[Lexi_the_linux_girl]

Easy enough to block your images and video from being crawled. Most webmasters use some sort of directory structure - just block your image & video directories.

Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /video/

And use your .htacess file to have images remotely linked in the interm go to a rude image to disuade theifs.

RewriteEngine on
# Prevent Image theft
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www/\.)?|(portal\.)?)yoursite.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|mpg|mp3|pdf)$ http://www.yoursite.com/rude_image_for_thiefs.gif [R,L]

Duh!

Why is this a problem?

[Autonomous Crowhard]

We're eternally hear about this site or that site being upset that Google or someone else links to some of their stuff. There's a simple solution...

De-list them!

The message to these sites is simple: You either have all of your content searchable or none. No picking and choosing. No letting the front page be at the top of list while everything else is accessible but hidden.

If not being in a search engine is ok with the web site, then fine. This would create economic pressure for these people to either play nice or leave. And it would also reduce the caseload in the courts.

And if you really wanted to have fun, you could always threaten to de-list anyone who links to those sites. Talk about pressure.

piracy on a page that uses adsense is against tos

[xxdinkxx]

I don't see how this is googles fault at all. No this is not yet another robots.txt post. If you pirate some copywritten material AND you are using adwords, iirc that is AGAINST google's policy. Google isn't the only search engine out there, and isn't the only advertising agency out there. Unless perfect 10 is going to target all sites that pirate their material - regardless of who they use to monitize their site, then this is all hypocritical. Google, and others, really should just drop them from their listings. I had never even heard of perfect 10 before this. The site is pretty lame anyway- I agree the fellow who said, "in 2006.. who is stupid enough to pay for jerk off material"- that's a side point. Also, has anyone looked at the terms of service for perfect 10? I was unable to find any such legal documentation - the site is under heavy slashdotting load.

robots.txt

[bigtrike]

Couldn't this company just opt out of indexing entirely via robots.txt?

The best answer would be:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. No web page can be cached offline without permission of the copyright owner.

2. The content of any webpage must be the original, unencumbered creation of the content owner, unless:
          a. The content is cited, and the owner is given credit for the content, and
          b. Permission(or License) is obtained from said owner

3. Any web page must have valid contact information for the creator Including a valid physical address and telephone number.

what about other images?

[ajrs]

what about other images of those models that Perfect 10 doesn't hold the copywrite on? If one of the models went on to have a swimsuit calendar how would google block the correct images? Would modeling for Perfect 10 ruin your carrier?

Anyone notice that Perfect10's site is slow today

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go \.er's

Let me get this straight...

[SheeEttin]

Let me get this straight.
Perfect 10 is suing Google because searching for Perfect 10's images returns images that were taken from P10's site and hosted illegally on other people's sites. This is no basis for a case. Perfect 10 says it's illegal because those same sites are using AdSense, making Google profit from the access of the illegally hosted images.

There is a possible case here, but there is a simple solution.
All Perfect 10 has to do is enforce their copyright, and prevent people from stealing images. It's like if someone stole something from your house and you sued someone giving directions.

Hm.

[kryptx]

It seems to be just a matter of going after the facilitating party.

If you ignore for the moment the whole mobile content angle, it's just like the old Napster case. Napster wasn't actually committing copyright infringement; they just facilitated it. Without Napster, there was no way (at the time) for people to share music easily and effectively. Similarly, without Google's indexing, people would not be able to find pirated Perfect 10 content easily and effectively. And it's not practical for P10 to legally pursue each individual website (even though that would be the best course of action). So what's the solution?

Simple. Launch a brand-new mobile content section that sells images similar to those indexed on Google, and sue Google itself.

What's ironic is that P10 will lose the support of any legitimate webmasters (since anyone displaying P10 content is being removed from GIS) and if they ever decide to launch a webmaster affiliate program its success will be limited by the results of this lawsuit. No adult webmaster wants their site to be blocked by Google.

With Google getting all wrapped up

[Anonymous Coward]

in this IP lunacy, is there any other search engine out there that can find what I'm looking for unencumbered? It looks like China's censorship is pretty weak compared to the censorship provided by IP law. Can somebody that's in a safe data haven please put up some sites that have the guts to teel the IP cartels to bugger off and just put up what they please? Right now we need uninhibited search capabilities. Anyone up for the task? We must make IP law unenforcable.

We need

[Anonymous Coward]

a freenet(distributed) style search engine. One that's untracable and unsuable. More importantly, untracable. We must take it upon ourselves to bring back our freedoms. IP law has provided the cartels with greater censorship abilities than the gov't itself. We have allowed it to trump the 1st Amendment of the American constitution. You may as well rip the damn thing up.

It's been 15 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

So how damn long do I have to wait???? Or is that a state secret??? So now I just keep hitting Submit until I get through???

Most insightful comment here

[SuperKendall]

OTH: If Google had even better image search, then the copyright owners could use Google to help track down the people who infringed by copying (not stealing) the images in the first place.

Exactly, I yearn for the day I can use Google search to look for images with certain metadata or even stenographic sigantures.

Then as I publish photos on the web a secondary source of income can be the triple damages from copyright infringement.

Does anyone know if Google looks at EXIF or IPTC data today?

Why not let them use the image for a fee?

[SuperKendall]

I am also doing phtoorgaphy on the side. I welcome Google into my images - if I ever find infinging use, I can either have them fork over the triple damages (assuming here the image is registered) or, to start with go the nice route and say "That image is really owned by me but I'd be happy to let you continue using it for $x (where you think of a number the company might be able or willing to pay) along with credit.

Why shut yourself off from a potential source of revenue? WHy hide your images in a dark alley when they could be out front for all the world to see?

What is Perfect 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice summary of who is involved and what the store is about. Do they mean Perfect10.com?

Courts Have Previously Ruled on This

[raftpeople]

Thumbnails were ruled to be ok in the case of a professional photographer vs some search engine.

This case may be different if the thumbnail itself is sold by the company. The other case ruled that the thumbnail was not a good enough representation to harm the photographer commercially.

Surfin' the Cache- it's all the rage!

[Anonymous Coward]

My biggest gripe with the system is that I make money from the work I produce. Not a lot but some. That money comes from adverts on the pages. The cached version of the pages don't show as many adverts or adverts that are as well targeted ergo I make less money from the same content and can do very little about it.

Do you really think that there are huge numbers of people cruising the cached version of your site? I have never sat down to surf the Google Cache, but I've sat down to surf the web lots of times. I suspect that other people do too.

If you concede that you can stop the caching of your page, but claim that that isn't the point, I can only wonder what the point actually *is*. If you don't want Google to touch your stuff, they won't. What more could you ask?

What is this right to not publish? Can any publisher of paper media recall thier books, or tear newspaper clippings off of bulletin boards?

Attitudes like yours are why I think we need copyright education and copyright reform. The latter to prevent things like the original story from being an issue, and the former so that people will understand the intent of the Constitution: copyright is to "promote science and useful arts", not to "protect my ideas/music/website from other people". Copyright is intended to allow someone to get paid for his effort, no allow someone to own an idea. If you honestly think that you are being stiffed on your AdSense ads or banners or whatever, I don't think you understand the purpose and usual use of the Google Cache.

Re:robots.txt is fun!

[Anonymous Coward]

>>> "implying that they thought everything on Google's image search"

No. They were implying that you'd have to be moderately inept to rely (at least in part) on copyright of your images for your business and not include your images folders in a robots.txt file. They just assumed your friend would have taken more care if he didn't want his images to be used. A reasonable assumption in my opinion. Your friend did the right thing though.

Now you might also have included some meta data with copyright info in the image file ... that should also be enough to prevent it's use in other peoples work.

Yeah-yeah I know, evil google shouldn't have been spidering your site but stuff happens, y'know.

p

Easy enough fix

[TheVampire]

All google has to do is only show part of the image as it's thumbnail. Just cut off the top, bottom, put a hole in the middle of it, whatever. As long as it's not of the whole image, then it's definatly an excerpt and therefore qualifies under fair use.

Re:Easy enough fix

[joskay]

Fun ways to crop the pictures. Use one of the following placed on the picture:
No admittance symbol or wrong way.
Stop sign.
Bill of rights.
American Flag.
Biological warning sign.
Skull and cross bones.

Just a joke : )

speaking as someone who actually

[alizard]

produces content for a living, I know that if nobody sees my content, no page views for the advertisers on the corporate tech publishing sites I write Linux how-to articles for, and editors stop buying what I write.

If you're too stupid to understand this idea, please put a robot.txt on your site excluding google so neither I nor anybody else will waste time on your alleged content... because any so-called content provider who actually believes what you just posted is too fucking incompetent to produce content any sane person would want to spend time on.

Now go back to the people you're astroturfing for and tell them you failed.

Re:speaking as someone who actually

[squoozer]

I'm not supprised you have trouble finding work - you seem to have some serious attitude problems that you need to work on. If you want to let anyone republish your work for any reason that's fine by me - release it under CC or some such license. I prefere to maintain some control in who publishes my work.

Mod parent mentally handicapped...

[TheNoxx]

I pray for whatever it is you produce or whoever works for you, for you must be a blithering moron. What part of public domain do you greedbags not understand? This case has absolutely nothing to do with your metaphor of buying a magazine and making illegal copies; why? Because Google is neither selling anything they cache, nor did they pay for it in the first place. Everything on Google is in the public domain, as in, you can see it for free, all Google does is search. It is not Google's job to prosecute or hunt down people that do make illegal copies of intellectual property.

Please turn in your /. card at the door.

Re:Mod parent mentally handicapped...

[squoozer]

Just be cause a work is freely viewable it does not mean it is free to copy. Please look up the difference between free as in beer and free as in speech. It is a subtle difference and one you seem to have missed.

This case has absolutely nothing to do with your metaphor of buying a magazine and making illegal copies; why? Because Google is neither selling anything they cache, nor did they pay for it in the first place.

So what you are trying to say is because they are givng it away the cached copy for free it is alright? Would it be alright to copy a book if you gave it away for free? Don't be so foolish and try thinking beofre you speak.

Re:Mod parent mentally handicapped...

[TheNoxx]

Yes, it does. This is why photographers don't get in trouble for taking picture with monuments/corporate art/etc in the background; or even if the photos are of the work themselves. Once you release something for free, particularly on the internet, it is in the public domain. The only difference is with television and radio, and that is the only place where public domain does not apply; mostly due to the efforts of lawyers and greedy folk.

So what you are trying to say is because they are givng it away the cached copy for free it is alright? Would it be alright to copy a book if you gave it away for free? Don't be so foolish and try thinking beofre you speak.

You have no concept of what is going on here. Google only caches pages that are freely available to the public. As the original work was freely available, there is absolutely nothing wrong with searching/indexing it.

If you had read the article, you would know that the company is trying to blame Google for showing pages that pirated/stole the company's images, the ones that you have to pay to look at, not for what is available on their page for free. In essence, the company simply wants Google to do all its legislation and copyright infringement hunting for them, which is absurd.

Re:Mod parent mentally handicapped...

[squoozer]

Public domain describes a work on which the copyright has expired it does not describe a work which is given away for free. No distinction is made in copyright law between the Internet and more traditional media.

I agree that there is no problem with Google searching and indexing the work. I never said there was. I disagree with them making copies of the work freely available from their private cache - that is not searching and indexing.

content

[steveoc]

This whole IP thing is completely out of hand.

Perfect10 is whinging and whining - and mostly complaining about the commercial and advertising aspects of this. Their biggest complaint is 'who is deriving advertising revenue off of images of women'

In order to reach this state in your head where you can agree that Perfect10 have a valid case, you have to make a number of steps of faith, and believe strongly in ALL of them :

- That making money from advertising is a good and positive way to make a living, and benefits society as a whole.

- That access to online content can somehow be owned by one party or another.

- That images of people somehow constitute 'Intellectual Property'

- That anything reproducable at no cost has an intrinsic value and can be owned.

There are so many aspects to this case which are just WRONG, and thats coming from a completely non-moralistic viewpoint.

Layer on top of this the simple fact that its all based on exploiting images of attractive young women .... and NOwHERE in the complaint is there a scrap of concern for these women who's images are now plastered all over the net and easy to find - Im sure thats not what those women expected when they signed their contracts and accepted their cheques.

But Perfect10 isnt worried about that at all - its all about who gets to charge money for advertising and licence revenue ??

If I was the judge in the this case, I would dismiss the whole case, and then sentence all of those involved (including the women in the photos) to 1 year of community service, mostly because they are all a bunch of dumbass tossers, motivated by greed alone, and with no concern for social realities.