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Ruling May Impact Google Book Search Case

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the their-lawyers-must-be-workaholics dept.

jsherman256 wrote to mention an NYT article discussing another possible problem on Google's legal front. A court decision in another case may spell trouble for their 'book search' technology. "In the recent case, Judge A. Howard Matz of United States District Court for the Central District of California, said Google's use of thumbnail-sized reproductions in its image search program violated the copyright of Perfect 10, a publisher of X-rated magazines and Web sites, because it undermined that company's ability to license those images for sale to mobile phone users ... 'I think it takes the wind out of their sails,' Jan Constantine, the general counsel for the Authors Guild, said of the Perfect 10 decision. The guild and the Association of American Publishers brought copyright infringement lawsuits against Google over its Book Search program."

3 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Overturned by wiser heads by lheal · · Score: 4, Interesting
    A little googling gave me some SEO site's take:
    The issue is that Google was indexing photos owned by Perfect 10 but made available on pirate sites that had stolen and profited from the prurient material. Another point was that some of the rip-off artists were Google AdSense users, and therefore Google had actually made money, in a roundabout way, from the infringement of Perfect 10's copyrights. The judge also determined that Google's mobile image search was cutting into Perfect 10's business, since the mobile "thumbnail images are essentially the same size and of the same quality as the reduced-size images that (Perfect 10) licenses to Fonestarz," a UK mobile firm, for a subscription-based cell phone service.

    Whether the images were pirated or not is not Google's problem. They should inform Google (who would doubtless take down the images) and go after the pirates. Google has no way of knowing who in the slimy world of online porn is the copyright owner, who is licensed, who is using stuff under fair use, and who is a "pirate".

    The judge made a mistake. Google's thumbnails were not the same thumbnails. They were a different expression of the same idea. Sleazy, but not illegal.

    --
    Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
  2. Super-impose "Copyrighted" on the image? by ponchoboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why doesn't Google just super-impose "Copyrighted" on the thumbnail images? That way people really wouldn't want to use them for cell phones since they are distorted.

  3. Missing pieces of information by NigelJohnstone · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's missing a key point:

    Perfect 10 blocked Google from indexing the site.
    Third party copied the content and put it on their own site.
    Google indexed that third parties site (not perfect 10's) compounding a existing copyright violation.

    Whereas the book publishers can simply tell Google which books they don't want scanned and so they've given implicit permission by refusing to list those books.

    Since fair use is a value judgement made by a judge interpreting a vague law, he sided with Perfect 10, but the same situation doesn't with the book publishers.