Adult Site Sues Google, Google Compared To MS Again 411
daria42 writes "It looks like Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 is suing Google to stop the search engine giant from using images of models in the images part of its search engine. The publisher has alleged Google is in breach of its copyright by displaying more than 3,000 photos." From the article: "Perfect 10 first became aware of Google serving up text links to other Web sites that allegedly carried copyright images of Perfect 10 models back in 2001, Zada said in an interview on Thursday. The company then sent notices to Google, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, asking the search giant to discontinue linking to the other sites." Additionally, with users writing to mention that that Google has changed their 10 Things statement recently, yet another article comparing them to Microsoft was bound to turn up. From the Sydney Herald article: "The question is whether the young upstarts who have built a hugely profitable business on Google's anti-corporate image are on the way to following Gates's path from bright young turk to monopolistic behemoth." Update: 08/26 13:27 GMT by Z : xmas2003 points out that the requested injunction is part of the suit Perfect 10 brought against Google last November, which we have previously reported on.
Publicity (Score:4, Insightful)
Would it not be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exploited? Please (Score:3, Insightful)
""I have never felt exploited. If anything it's giving you power over men. The only people exploited, if anyone is, are the men who go out and spend their money on porn," says..Michelle Thorne, who has worked in the porn industry for six years"
Remove the site completely from the database! (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps google should completely remove all references to the site from its search engine database, and ensure that it never gets listed again?
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
James
Bad habits die hard... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perfect 10's lawsuit against Google is similar to one it filed against Amazon.com in July. In that suit, Perfect 10 makes similar allegations against Amazon's A9 search engine.
If they're so damn pissed with their images turning up on search engines, why don't they just pull them off 'public' access. I mean put them under an area accessible only after someone logs in.
Heck, there's robots.txt...
Nandz.
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure that Google ought to be held liable for this. They only provide an indexing service which is just happening to find copyright violations. There is a case to be made that by redisplaying thumbnail versions of the images, that they are also in violation of copyright, but it's nowhere near as clear cut as with the actually infringing websites.
Re:what's that word again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do things for money that I wouldn't ordinarily do. It's called "gainful employment".
pr0n.google.com (Score:3, Insightful)
;-)
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
So far Google hasn't don't anything worthy of being called "evil". Seems like some people are just digging for anything at all that can be said against them.
Daniel
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, it looks like everyone and their mother is trying to cash in on Google. They're such a huge target that they're easy to attack with lawsuits. This actually does make them like Microsoft, but unlike Microsoft, Google doesn't have a legal department the size of Kentucky to back it up... give it time though.
Who knows, I might sue Google for aggrigating my slashdot comments! That's about as frivilous as this lawsuit is.
google is to microsoft as (Score:3, Insightful)
IN other words, what the fuck is the comparison? Wake me up when I'm NOT ALLOWED to switch away from their products and they've managed to muzzle the regulators despite clearly illegal monopolistic behavior!
Doesn't anybody get it? MS doesn't have to do anything for their customers and they automatically get billions every month. Google has to satisfy customers to get revenue. Does Google try to go over your head if you don't want to use their products?
Re:Bad habits die hard... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're suing Google for indexing images off *other* sites that are hosting their copyrighted images without permission. They basically want Google (and A9) to police their copyright for them.
Re:Every one of you people are fucking stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, according to the DMCA, it is.
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a group of people who will never like any company or group that is succesful. And there will always be people who attack the leaders just because they are leading, whether it is the NY Yankees (I try not to be one of them, but alas, I live in Ohio and I am a Cleveland fan) or google.
Wayback machine has the previous list (Score:5, Insightful)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.google.co
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
And the privacy concerns? So they keep a record of searches. I don't care. They do so many that it's impossible for anyone to come up with useful data from google. All you'll be able to tell is that lots of people search for porn.
Microsoft earned its title of "most evil" because they single-mindedly destroy all of their competition through FUD and other BS. Google hasn't really gotten rid of any of their competition (Yahoo and MSN are still there--I can't really think of a "large" web portal that's not there anymore) and that doesn't seem to be their goal. Just to do what they do best. I certainly have heard more reporting of this than I've heard anyone I know complain about google. Usually when the media outlets are pushing something, it's a good idea to take it with a grain of salt.
offtopic- Kos at dailykos said yesterday that he thinks dailykos could become larger than slashdot, hits per day wise, before the end of the year--people called pullshit, but I'm really kind of interested now.
Google is HELPING them! (Score:4, Insightful)
How would the magazine know about these infringements if it weren't for google?
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Displaying something publically doesn't waive copyright. It doesn't work that way.
Re:Publicity (Score:3, Insightful)
how would we know? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
So it may not have financial value, but it definitely has value. If it were a sane company/person, they would have emailed Google and said "hey, look. please, please take down those links, they're hurting our business and violating our copyright".. instead of waving around the DMCA and getting the media involved, which I'm sure Perfect 10's gonna use to their advantage in trying to get a bigger settlement.
I hate google (Score:2, Insightful)
Whats the worst part about it is that if people had known that google was going to trash dejanews, they wouldn't have deleted their own usenet archives.
Re:robots.txt (Score:2, Insightful)
i) harder to track down than Google
ii) probably much poorer than Google,
so it's really not a tricky decision for Perfect 10's lawyers as to who they go after.
The more you sue a company the more "Evil" it gets (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Replace Google with Napster and Perfect 10 with the RIAA. Is this really such an open and shut case in favor of Google?
This is a tricky question. (Score:3, Insightful)
Google aims to provide the best possible search engine on the internet. This requires certain methods that are optimized in regard to provide the users with the content they need. This engine has not been designed to violate copyrights. Should it be held liable when it happens? It's the same as being able to make a law suit against a baseball bat manufacturer, as their bats might be used as weapons.
Perfect 10 deliver porn to its users. Most of this content is in images, and therefore the value (the product) is the images them self. This is the reason copyright laws were made. If their content is "stolen" and "sold" through other channels than their own site, they lose money.
The problem is that both arguments make reason.
It would be difficult if a company like Google should integrate a filter to lockout individual cases, like Perfect 10. In a sense such a filter would work against the Google product.
Technically the real case will probably end with discussions about caching of images on the Google servers and displaying content outside their context... time will show. The winner will probably be the company with most muscle, as it usually is, and this will unfortunately deprive us of knowing the best solution to the problem.
Oh, what a tangled web... (Score:3, Insightful)
With luck, the law will (ultimately) distinguish between enterprise and infrastructure. Suing Google makes as much sense as suing your post-office for mail fraud.
Moreover... beyond images, what about copyrighted phrases like "Things go better with Coke"? Should Google not search for them?
Re:Bad habits die hard... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Google took the right decision by not acceding to their request. It's not their job to evaluate whether copyrights are being violated or not. They might start getting a 100 odd requests to remove websites from their index just coz someone thinks those websites are in violation of copyright!
It's actually more insane (insaner?) than I thought!!
Nandz.
Enough already with this M$ comparision! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's make an effort here to make the point that there might be some similar aspects to Google and Microsoft, but this bland statement of comparision is silly.
Re:robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Like you said ciro, people are just suing Google because they know that Google has money. It's like all the Michael Jackson pedophile cases (please don't go further into those). As long as people can suspect that something is going on even without proving it, they're going to go for the gold. Google tries to keep their secrets about the business and so people think that the mystery behind their search engine gives companies the right to sue over the stupidest things.
2. As childish and stupid as it may sound, I think there are a small number of cases of bad press about Google going around whose flames were fanned by getting lowered on the grand ladder of Page Rank. With how much money people are pouring into SEO and SEM 'experts' however knowledgable they really are, I can easily conceive that someone will cough up that same amount to shit on Google's front lawn when that SEO project resulted in a lower rank in the only engine they think matters.
Bottom line: The internet is a big and scary place, and when you can't find that mean man that stole your purse, you can blame it on that really big guy standing next to you because he's probably that big for a bad reason. Or at least you can make a few judges believe you.
Re:Exploited? Please (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you arguing that the age of majority should be raised to 25?
Frankly, I've known several 50 and 60 year olds who, in my opinion, were no good at considering the long-term consequences of their actions. But so what? They're adults and they will do as they wish, regardless of what I think.
I suspect something 'Darl' like is in play here. (Score:5, Insightful)
They must be be getting their money some other way than by earning it.
So who are the players here? What links are there to some competition. (And there must already be a way to tell search 'bots' to ignore subdirectories so this suit is nothing but a legal annoyance, not a valid suit.)
Re:robots.txt (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:what's that word again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sigh... are you kidding me? Liberals and/or feminists are the people that define porn as exploitation. And, of course, a "conservative = bad" post get's a +5 Insightful.
Re:I suspect something 'Darl' like is in play here (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
Google only shows a thumbnail of the image, this is assumed to be within the doctrine of fair use as its a small portion, not the full image, to get the full image you have to follow the link to it, where the rights owner is able to distribute the full image on their standards, or to the location of the infringer.
Re:Exploited? Please (Score:5, Insightful)
How about all the 18-24 year old girls who are paying their way through school or supporting a family?
BTW - age 18 is considered in Canada (and much of the United States) as "age of majority". By that age, people are considered mature enough to vote to change the future of our nation, smoke cigarettes, drive any form of motor vehicle, own property, enter into legal contracts, hold full-time careers, etc. Why then are they not old enough to decide how, when and where to use their own bodies?
BTW2 - what are the consequences? To have people such as yourself and others look down on them for their career choice?
A friend of mine was a stripper (no sexual favours, just dancing) who paid her way through college, bought a car then replaced it some years later and completely supported her husband while he attended university. She now works full-time (with her clothes on) as does he, and he makes more than enough money to support them both comfortably due to his credentials.
Does she hide the fact that she stripped? Hell no. Does she feel exploited? Yep. She feels that she exploited dozens of men every night who turned over 10, 20 or even several hundred dollars to be in her company.
i) harder to track down than Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what's that word again? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's sue the internet. So, I guess we go for Al Gore right?
Image theft (Score:4, Insightful)
So why aren't they suing the image thieves?
that's right, google's got deep pockets.
Diff between Goog and MS (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft pisses off their competetitors because they use illegal, immoral, unethical tactics to forgo competition, even with companies that are far better ethically and technologically.
Microsoft's customers hate them because their products suck.
Re:what's that word again? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Jack's inability to be impressed with one form of exploitation vs. another.
So, let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tired of BS Lawsuits (Score:1, Insightful)
You can put all the robots.txt files on your site you want, but it's not going to affect google's indexing of my site. See why it is the absolute height of stupid to even mention robots.txt?
Society is full of things where there is a primary purpose and a secondary effect and the owner is required to moderate that secondary effect. Television and radio stations have to make sure that they meet certain standards. Automobile drivers have to make sure their cars only dump so much crap into the atmosphere. Oil companies are responsible when their tankers run aground and dump billions of barrels of oil into the ocean.
People have made an comparison with the phone book. Yet you can't look in your phonebook under "wheels" and get a list of places that specialize in distributing stolen name brand wheels. Yet google indexes sites after sites that do nothing except distribute images in violation of copyright.
Re:Publicity lol (Score:1, Insightful)
A Modest Proposal (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Exploited? Please (Score:1, Insightful)
(Sorry for the tongue-in-cheek)
No, you're expected to become increasingly responsible as you grow older; and it's your parent's legal responsiblity to make sure you do.
If you're 18, you've recieved at least 13 years of free education in mathematics, science, English composition, and rhetoric, all of which teach both formal reasoning and critical thinking as core components. You're better prepared to face the world today than at any other time in history, and you're being asked to face it at a much later age. If 13 years of comprehensive formal education hasn't made you ready to face the world's challenges, what will?
You're better educated by age 10 than the average peasant was during his entire liftetime during the last thousand years or so. My grandfather was expected to be a man, and provide for his family as head of the household at age twelve. (His father died early during a farm accident, and my grandfather was the oldest boy).
My dad, and all his brothers, worked construction jobs and gave the money to support the rest of the family all through high school. My Dad lived in a poor, remote, frigid corner of Canada, near Winnipeg. He had to walk to school (and take care of his little sister along the way; he was nine and she was seven), and when he got there, he was expected to light the wood stove if the was the first one in the school, and to fire up the coal oil lanterns. He remembers five year old kids driving grain trucks across the prairies, being called out of school during the fall for grain harvest. There's such a thing as being forced to grow up too fast, and theres such a thing as being unwilling to face up to your responsiblities.
Frankly, if you haven't learned to make responsible choices by age 18, you've been terribly neglient wich all the free opportunities you've been provided with. Kids today don't appreciate just how sheltered and pampered their daily lives today really are. At some point, they have to grow up, and join the adult world.
--
AC
Re:Image theft (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Publicity (Score:3, Insightful)
Riiight. And Microsoft's interest in comparing Google's badness to
>So far Google hasn't don't anything worthy of being called "evil".
Their cookie expires in 2038, they block freedom-related sites in China, they never delete your email and they pirate other people's contents (without consent) using the Google cache. These are some of the things we *know*. Then there are those other other things that we don't.
Re:Publicity (Score:1, Insightful)
I totally agree. But they have done a number of things that Microsoft would have been blasted as evil for around here.
Like China censorship, punish/boycott selective leading news site for writing things they don't like, collecting a staggering amount of info about us, Windows only products/functionality, Gmail only IM, everlasting betas, arrogance,