Partial Victory for Perfect 10?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday February 21, 2006 @05:27PM from the responsible-but-not-liable dept.

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.'"

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Re:Question by Belseth · 2006-02-21 17:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.