Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle

eldavojohn writes "Google is currently fighting many fronts in its ability to show small images returned in a search from websites. Most recently, Google won the case against them in which they were displaying nude thumbnails of a photographer's work from his site. Prior to this, Google was barred from displaying copyrighted content, even when linking it to the site (owner) from its search results. The verdict: "Saying the District Court erred, the San Francisco-based appeals court ruled that Google could legally display those images under the fair use doctrine of copyright law." This sets a rather hefty precedence in a search engine's ability to blindly serve content safely under fair use."

What happened to robots.txt?

[Opportunist]

If you don't want your page to show up in google, send the robot home. They actually honor that, ya know.

If you don't know how to use it, well, then maybe you should not display your content on the internet. It will survive without.

yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really any different from a legal standpoint?

Yes, because now a court has ruled that it is legal.

If Google gets fair use, others will too. This helps to chip away at the damage the DMCA (and a few very uneducated court rulings) has done.

So this case has nothing to do with nudity?

[joeflies]

this appears to be a case of fair use over copyrighted work. So why's the nudity a part of the article headline?

Victory!

[yotto]

This is more than a victory for Google. It's even more than a victory free speech. It's a victory for copyright law reform and a victory for anybody fighting a battle for free distribution of content over the internet.

And it's of course a victory for all of us who like teh boobays.

Text is a part; a thumbnail is a whole

[searchr]

Main difference is the protection for text and video is the ability to fairly take a portion of the entire copyrighted piece. With a still photo, even though it's a smaller version, it's still the ENTIRE image, which on the surface seems to go against the definition of "All Rights Reserved". The question a court has to consider, is if that thumbnail, that smaller version, in any way detracts or takes away anything from the original (and not just commercial, there's an artistic value to it as well.) For this case, I think specifically as a search engine function, the court says meh, you're fine.

In fact, as a test of Fair Use, it isn't clear if the wholesale simple shrinking of an image to smaller size is in itself fair game, or if it is just within the specific context of a search engine.

Makes me wonder what this means for the Google Books thingamajig.

Sorry, no way.

[Uniquitous]

A thumbnail doesn't give you the full detail of a full-sized image. Try to scale it up and you get pixellated garbage.

Re:RTFA

[Volante3192]

np, Perfect 10 just has to send DMCA removal requests to the original sites...which they can easily find with Google image search.

What I'm wondering is why go after the intermediate? Google's providing them a wealth of information on infringers. Shut down the middleman you lose your path to the top. (bottom?) Seems to me Perfect 10's just (a) lazy and (b) looking for a quick buck. Go after the REAL infringers already.

Missing something...

[__aaclcg7560]

Couldn't the photographer have a robot.txt file in the website root directory to tell the robots to leave the image directory alone? That's what I do for my website to keep my pictures off the image search.

Don't apologize. Yes way.

[searchr]

It's not the detail that matters, it's the entire image that's is in view, not a corner or portion. The court didn't define "thumbnail", either. So thumbnail to one person is small viable image to another. If the original is 3000 pixels wide, is a 400 pixels enough of a reduction to be considered "thumbnail"?

For certain uses, having full resolution doesn't matter. A small version of a porn image, meant only for online viewing to begin with, may be enough to, um, function, for the viewer, degrading the value of the original. I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just saying there's a difference between taking a paragraph from an entire novel, or a single frame from an episode of The Daily Show, and showing an image in its entirety, except smaller.

Example would be, say, the first exclusive pics of Angelina Jolie's baby. Million dollar shots. Or the first image ever of the iPhone. Priceless. But posting a tiny version online, it would still "reveal" everything that the larger version would, taking that right of publishing/profit/secrecy away from the owner. On a cellphone, a way that many many millions of people are viewing images now, a "thumbnail" is plenty big enough to see all they need to see.

I don't need to print a six foot framed print to hang over my couch. I just want to see Britney nekkid. So there's a difference.

Re:Victory!

[GigsVT]

No.

Just because one part of a law is good, doesn't mean the entire thing is good. Especially with the federal government and their tendency to cram 100 unrelated issues into one act.

Re:RTFA

[Scrameustache]

np, Perfect 10 just has to send DMCA removal requests to the original sites...which they can easily find with Google image search.

What I'm wondering is why go after the intermediate?

That's the BILLION DOLLAR question.

Simple answer.

[Kadin2048]

What I'm wondering is why go after the intermediate?

Deep pockets.

Re:Don't apologize. Yes way.

[Fordiman]

You're missing the point, man. If you were to compare this to a novel, it'd be like taking the sentence from each page and making a page of that.

Or, more cognitively, the cliff's notes of a book: you get the whole story, but not the interesting (or not - there's a reason cliff's notes exist) details.

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