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)
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: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.
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:I hate google (Score:2)
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Funny)
Large is Evil.
Any organization bigger than a jazz combo is, by its inherent nature, Satanic
Re:Publicity (Score:3)
You are of course correct, and it is a very unhealthy way of thinking, generally speaking.
That said, I will never stop hating on the L.A. Lakers.
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, could the journalist have chosen a more biased sample?
Re:Publicity (Score:5, 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.
Re:Publicity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Publicity (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmm. Something not quite right here. What could the MS spindroids be thinking?
"Hey, I just had an excellent idea for a fudwave..."
"Yeah?" (puts down bimbo and cigar for a second)
"Look.. we're evil, right?"
"Damn right! I mean, unfortunately, yes...?"
"I mean, we tried to fix that - the Foundation, pocket money for Africa, Bill even visited some schools..."
"People always want a villain, I guess that's us..."
"So, since Google refuse to compete fairly with us, here's the plan... We're going to redefine the meaning of 'evil'..."
"uh?"
"Lots of PR about 'Google is evil too, just like MS'"
"Solid! And then, 'IBM is evil'"
"Yup. Then, 'Linux is evil' and so on. Eventually people gonna start associating 'evil' with 'cool', and then we'll be there"
"Sigh. Been a long time since we were cool."
"OK, call in some favours. I think Perfect-10 still owe us for that time with the Senator."
"Trollboys online?"
"Yup. Ready to go!"
It might just work.
Re:Publicity (Score:4, Interesting)
Quoted from the article: Bill Gates certainly sees similarities between Google and his own company. This spring, in an interview with Fortune, Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said that Google was "more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with."
Re:Publicity (Score:4, Informative)
- Google is also attracting unfamiliar epithets such as "arrogant"
- Its sheer financial power has sent salaries in Silicon Valley rocketing
- Dotcom start-ups are also finding it difficult to persuade potential financial backers that their prospective markets will not be squashed by the might of Google
This looks a lot like the works of a PR company working for one of Google's competitors (Probably Microsoft, perhaps Yahoo). The articles show a lot of the patterns described by Paul Graham in his "Submarine" essay [paulgraham.com] (April 2005).
If the media did some actual research, instead of just printing whatever content the PR firms feed them, we'd have some more interesting content in the news.
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: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 th
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:I suspect something 'Darl' like is in play here (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that they're going after Google, not the sites that are trying to profit from copyrighted material...
-JMP
Re:I suspect something 'Darl' like is in play here (Score:5, Funny)
I've got the creepy crawlies just thinking about what spayware could do to a person.
Image theft (Score:4, Insightful)
So why aren't they suing the image thieves?
that's right, google's got deep pockets.
Would it not be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:2)
Going after Google, which is merely showing thumbnails of publicly available (whether legitimately or otherwise) is missing the point entirely.
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Would it not be easier... (Score:2)
How about you go after them, not google? (They say they lodged a DMCA request with google, but it's unclear if it was framed correctly; i.e. with the DMCA agent [copyright.gov], with specific URLs, by certified letter, etc. Also, I doubt they filed 3000 pornographic images with the Library of Congress for copyright,
No privacy (Score:3, Informative)
Smells like someone is up to some clever [wikipedia.org] marketing.
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 ma
Re:No privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Displaying something publically doesn't waive copyright. It doesn't work that way.
Perfect Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Concrete Cam [komar.org] is up and running ... ;-)
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?
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: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:Bad habits die hard... (Score:2)
Perfect 10's product is photographs
Someone rips off their photos and puts them on their website - www.scammingpirates.com.
Google indexes scammingpirates and displays the images in their index.
How is Perfect 10 going to use robots.txt to stop Google indexing scammingpirates? How will Perfect 10 removing the pictures from their website stop google displaying the results from another website?
What course of action can Perfect 10 take to remove their photos from Google's in
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
Re:Bad habits die hard... (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way around this would be for Google to
Another interesting idea would be to use such software to compare the images on the web, with images that a company sent in and wanted protected for a fee, when matches were found, the protection purchaser could be sent a notice.
This software would be very difficult and bleeding edge to produce, a worthy challenge for a company like Google
Behemoth? (Score:2)
Sure it's possible. It's also possible that they'll become a gentle giant, and that's the outcome I'm rooting for.
When they start threatening computer makers for letting the users go to any search engine other than theirs, then we can start worrying about the "monopolistic behemoth".
Goodwin's Law (Score:2)
Re:Goodwin's Law (Score:2, Funny)
that's Godwin (Score:5, Funny)
Every one of you people are fucking stupid (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, they are suing Google for not policing Perfect 10's copyright. Not for indexing Perfect 10's sites, but rather for indexing other sites who happen to have stolen Perfect 10's images. And they're not suing the other sites - they're suing Google. This would be like if the *AA immediately started suing all ISPs as if they were knowingly involved in large-scale copyright infringement.
This is scary, and I hope Perfect 10 falls flat on their ass. It's not Google's job to police everyone else's copyright and make sure that they don't index images in such a manner.
Re:Every one of you people are fucking stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, according to the DMCA, it is.
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:Every one of you people are fucking stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Had you ever heard of Perfect10 before? I hadn't. The company just spent $1,000 on lawyer bills and got themselves $1,000,000 worth of publicity. Exactly what I think they were shooting for.
Re:Every one of you people are fucking stupid (Score:3, Funny)
How about... (Score:2, Interesting)
pr0n.google.com (Score:3, Insightful)
;-)
Re:pr0n.google.com (Score:3, Informative)
Usenet binary groups already exist!
Incidentally, I'm pretty sure Perfect Ten used to (or still does?) post its own images to Usenet, as a form of marketing. I have to wonder why they're surprised that content they were giving away for free found its way onto other web sites.
Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
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:google is to microsoft as (Score:3, Informative)
Browsers:
- Firefox
- Netscape
- Opera
Operating Systems:
- Linux
- OS X
Office Suites:
- Open Office
Media Players:
- iTunes
- WinAmp
- QuickTime
- RealPlayer
Dev Environments:
- Eclipse
I'll go ahead and get you another copy of that memo, mmm'kay?
Re:google is to microsoft as (Score:3)
In the case where it's INTERNAL collaboration (i.e. members of the admin's collective collaborate together), there is some flexibility. But for EXTERNAL collaboration (the admin's boss sends data to another collective's boss), there
It's not that simple. (Score:5, Informative)
IMHO bullshit. Google is not a police to check whether images they index infringe on someone's copyright. All they host are thumbnails which can be easily proven to be "fair use" for informative purposes. Then they LINK to pages that infringe on the site's copyright - and from then on, admins should send out C&D, sue and do all kinds of nasty things to admins of these sites. Once they remove the infringing content, Google will make its own indexes expire automatically, with next update. Of course assholes think it's easier to make Google remove the links, removing all traffic to the competing sites at once, instead of hunting each of them separately, but it seems all they can get is waste a lot on lawyers and have the case thrown out of court.
If I make a photo of a pile of CDs, with purpose to put it in a newspaper, I don't copy them, and in no way I'm responsible about finding out whether they are pirated or original. Same with thumbnails of images found on various sites. Google states the fact: "This site has these images". Determining legal status of that site having these images is completely offtopic.
Re:It's not that simple. (Score:2)
Ok then - prove it.
Wayback machine has the previous list (Score:5, Insightful)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.google.co
Google is HELPING them! (Score:4, Insightful)
How would the magazine know about these infringements if it weren't for google?
Google is sued because they have the money (Score:5, Informative)
Finally these sites were harvested by Google and indexed.
So who is committing copyright infrigement again?
If anything Google should be thanked for providing a link to the people's website who took the images without permission, allowing them to be perhaps identified. P10 should be suing *them*.
But no, it's too much work and they probably are just a bunch of amateur with little to no money, so P10 is choosing to sue Google instead. Guess why.
How this has anything to to with Google's alleged "arrogance" we'll never know.
"Arrogant" is another term for successful people who are onto a good thing and they know it. Many can't take somebody else's success. So Apple, Microsoft and now Google are "arrogant".
Personnally I'm delighted that Google is doing so well. So far everybody benefits, including mere users. At least we have Microsoft running scared a little. In the past this meant they react intelligently and fast (like in the case of the web browser for win95) but these days they take the PR approach a bit more.
We'll see what happens.
Why is Perfect 10 happy about this? (Score:2)
Why all the Google-hate? (Score:2)
They aren't -- sure, maybe they'll wind up that way, but they aren't at the moment. The only people that I've really seen full of hate for Google are "SEO" (spam) people -- I'm wondering if those are the people who keep submitting anti-Google articles.
Google (Score:5, Interesting)
* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer -- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -- and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).
Far better than just changing it on the sly and hoping no-one will notice.
Robots.txt (Score:2)
What happened to Robots.txt to start with? And authentication?
If google can crawl more than 3,000 Perfect 10 photos why wouldn't non-members be able to view these pictures?
This is an indicative that there's something wrong with their setup.
Case overruled!
ty.
The more you sue a company the more "Evil" it gets (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wait a minute, here's a mirror. (Score:2)
Cache of the article here. [google.com]
Pubic interest petition... (Score:2)
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.
Frivolous (Score:3, Interesting)
We've seen this before with the lawsuits that took place against companies who developed p2p networks because the plantiffs had a misconception that the developers knowingly allowed this material on their "network".
They just want someone to blame as an easy way to get money. Google has lots of it, so their next logical step is to blame them.
Google is not responsible. They are merely a search index. You know this, I know this, but the technologically illeterate morons we have for judges don't see this.
Instead they see in black and white, and without knowing the truth about how the technology works and who's to blame/not to blame, they blindly dish out decisions - and a lot of times they aren't in favor with real justice.
I wonder if they could countersue for these companies trying to manipulate the system.
So, let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
They should just remove it. (Score:3, Interesting)
If the website in question has not added these tags into the pages well its there own darned fault.
But honestly the only loser in this game is the porn site Google should just remove them from the results entirely then watch their visitor logs go right down. I dont see how there can ever be a case for a a website to sue google succesfully on these kinds of grounds. That is provided Google are going by the book and parsing those "dont spider this site" tags.
If they were good Netizens, they would... (Score:3, Informative)
2) still leave some pages index-able as a teaser to the bulk of their content
idiots...
Re:robots.txt (Score:4, Informative)
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:robots.txt (Score:4, Interesting)
states
so for one I doubt they have exclusive rights to all their "Thousands of images", in fact there are quite a few wholesalers that will sell you rights to tons of porn on a non-exclusive basis for the budding pornographer, I'm sure more than a couple of these photo's ended up in their archives, or possibly perfect10 has a subsidiary that wholesales to other sites. Another problem is for example I take a few pictures, while burning through a roll I get a couple that are almost identicle, who's to say I can't sell rights for one to one company, and rights to another. perfect10 definetely has an uphill battle, even proving infringement even took place.
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.
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, 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 th
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.
i) harder to track down than Google? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 goi
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Insightful)
James
Re:robots.txt (Score:2)
They can sue the Internet next.
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?
Re:robots.txt (Score:2)
This is not my POV but merely an alternative view to the matter than what you posted.
Re:robots.txt (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:robots.txt (Score:2)
Re:robots.txt (Score:2)
Re:robots.txt (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh come on, get off your high horse. Search engines facilitate people connecting with content. If it is on the web, and I can view it, then Google's web-engine has every right to view it. They are giving you the option.
This case is nuts. I'm not going to 100% back Google, it IS a gray area, but having Google protect your own copyrights for you is crazy!
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 dist
Re:robots.txt (Score:2)
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"
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.
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".
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:what's that word again? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Jack's inability to be impressed with one form of exploitation vs. another.
Why is parent +5 Insightful? (Score:2)
Let's see:
:)
1- Ummm, no, porn stars aren't used to the greatest possible advantage. If they were, they'd be turned into fuel sources after their time passed
2- If we interpret this definition strictly
Re:what's that word again? (Score:2)
(obviously w/o the spaces, I don't want to be responsible for people clicking it at work...)
They even have an interface to view the most pictures from individual directories....
Keep in mind that lawsuits have become a "legitimate" revenue stream for many companies.... So of course you would sue the company with the most money, not necessarily the biggest offender...
Re:Tired of BS Lawsuits (Score:2)
The issue is with the indexing of other sites that have infringed the plaintiff's copyright. I don't think they have a legitimate case against google, but your "solutions" address a problem that doesn't exist, ehich you'd know if you'd take the time to read. Maybe you should sue yourself for wasting everyone's time, since we can't sue you for
Re:Tired of BS Lawsuits (Score:2)
how would we know? (Score:2, Insightful)
They have one, of sorts... (Score:3, Informative)