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Google Businesses The Internet Government The Courts Your Rights Online News

Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle 204

Posted by CowboyNeal from the over-for-now dept.
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."
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Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle More

Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle

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  • How is this different from text? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anarchysoft ( 1100393 ) <anarchy@anarchys o f t .com> on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:06PM (#19172469) Homepage
    For many years, Google has shown snippets of a website's likely copyrighted text. Is this really any different from a legal standpoint?

    • yes (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:10PM (#19172509)
      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.

      • Re:yes (Score:5, Funny)

        by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:39PM (#19173379)
        Personally, I don't really see what the fuss is all about. I go around with my thumbnails uncovered all of the time (even though they are a bit chewed-up) and I don't care if people can see my nude thumbnails on Google or not.

        • Re:yes (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18, 2007 @03:25AM (#19175675)
          This thread is useless without pics.
        • I think you point out the rather humorous point of people making assumptions when many meanings are possible. I'm reminded of a scene fro Family Guy at a meeting for the construction of the Constitution.

          Jefferson: "So, do you think we should go into more detail about the 2nd ammendment? You know, to clarify it?"
          Washington: "No, I think it's clear enough the way it is. Everyone has the right to keep bear arms over their door. Simple, isn't it?"

          On the other hand, your joke has inspired me to consider the poss

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gfxguy ( 98788 )
        How does this chip away at the DMCA? What part of the DMCA was violated? Just because it's digital content?

      • Re:yes (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18, 2007 @12:20AM (#19174697)
        Actually, it is different from a legal standpoint. There are a few reasons one could point to, but I think the main one is that a snippet of text is just that - a piece of a larger work. In the case of thumbnails, you get the whole image, even though it's shrunken down. But it's still the whole thing. So the question is: does that make a difference under the law? And the answer we got yesterday is, at least in the territory governed by the 9th Circuit, "probably not much of a difference."

        But I have to caution everyone against a few things: first, you should refrain from describing the case before reading it: the court didn't say Google's practices were exactly "legal." They did give a strong fair use argument related to the use of thumbnails in image searching, but they didn't say that everything Google did was kosher - they laid out a rule and told the lower court to look into the facts and apply their new ruling to see if Google did everything properly. So, while it was a positive ruling, Google didn't quite "win."

        Second, I don't know what the poster above is talking about when he mentions "the DMCA" and "uneducated court rulings." The only thing the DMCA has to do with this case is that it might help Google avoid liability because of the so-called safe harbors for internet services. The "bad" part of copyright law that Google was sued under is just the plain-old copyright statute that has - more or less - been in effect for the past 100 years. Also, there aren't any "uneducated court rulings" in regard to this case - the trial court decided mostly in favor of Google and against it only on a pretty narrow set of issues. It was a thoughtful decision and, again, I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in these issues.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Miseph ( 979059 )
          But... but... Google Good, DMCA Bad, judges Incompetent. Everybody knows that. Don't go rocking the boat with your new fangled "ideas" that you get from "analyzing the facts for yourself" rather than just accepting the "Slasbot groupthink" as the gospel we all know it is!

          No good will come of this, I tell ya. No good at all.

          Now if ya'll will excuse me, I've got to go attend to my Beowulf cluster of Linux servers hosting my Natalie Portman with hot grits fingernail fetish pr0n site and distributing perfectly
      • The slashdot summary: "google wins! score! yippee!"
        TFA: Google wins part of nude-photo suit

        Notice any difference?
        TFA: But the three-judge panel handed Google a mixed victory. It sent the case back to the District Court to determine whether Google was indirectly liable for damages because it linked to websites that displayed Perfect 10's copyrighted images without permission.

        A win like that would bankrupt most of us.
        The coverage elsewhere has been more nuanced.
        http://howappealing.law.com/051607.html [law.com]

    • Text is a part; a thumbnail is a whole (Score:5, Insightful)

      by searchr ( 564109 ) <searchr AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:26PM (#19172693)
      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. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Uniquitous ( 1037394 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:38PM (#19172797)
        A thumbnail doesn't give you the full detail of a full-sized image. Try to scale it up and you get pixellated garbage.

        • Don't apologize. Yes way. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by searchr ( 564109 ) <searchr AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:55PM (#19172975)
          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: (Score:2)

            by aldo.gs ( 985038 )
            I agree that there is a difference between taking a paragraph from a novel and a reduced-size "complete" image. That's the point of thumbnails: to show the "complete" picture, I think.

            But it is not the entire image that's in view. Not by a long shot, in most cases. Sure, you can see naked some girl with your face nearly touching your monitor and be done with it; but it is still just a sample of what you are looking for. A sample in the sense that most details are gone. Perhaps not as much as the original au

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dido ( 9125 )

            If you've seen how Britney's been looking lately, I don't think you'd be very happy getting your wish [thesuperficial.com]...

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Fordiman ( 689627 )
            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.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by The One and Only ( 691315 )

            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.

            Of course, by the very nature of Google Image Search, that wouldn't be a problem for Google so much as whatever page it indexed.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by iamacat ( 583406 )
            it would still "reveal" everything that the larger version would, taking that right of publishing/profit/secrecy away from the owner

            In what way? The owner already published the image on a public web page, accessible without login and free of cost. Otherwise Google wouldn't be able to pick it up. Anyone can easily access that full size, 3000 pixel wide porn with a regular web browser. They further declined to provide robots.txt, which is a widely-known tool to control search engine.

          • 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"?

            "Fair use" already has to deal with that question in the case of text. Is reproducing an entire volume of Proust's seven-volume "À la recherche du temps perdu" "fair use"? (Ok, it must be public domain by now, but consider a more recent translation of it, where the translation would be in copyright.)

          • 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.
            That could probably be arranged very easily: http://images.rhino.com/videoflash/thedudesons/con sumer/britney.htm [rhino.com] (work safe).
        • Not necessarily: you lose fidelity, that is true, but you don't need to fill in the pixels with solid color ;)

          There are interesting follow-on questions from this. For example, there are fractal-based algorithms that, instead of pixellating the image, put in some fractal image based on the surrounding area. While it doesn't stand very close scrutiny, it does provide an illusion of detail. Or you could have an artist paint in the missing detail. Are these copyright infringement? I think surely yes, it

          • I thought fair use was for allowing derivative work.

            Anyway, I hardly think that matters.

            You're basically stating that if I were to use a small fraction of a media format, it's not under fair use - when it clearly is. A thumbnail is *not* the whole image. Particularly Google's thumbs, which are 142px on their largest side. Even for something as small as a 320x200 low res shot of someone, that's 1/4 of the image, any way you try to wiggle out of it, and far too small to be useful for anything but a thumbna

            • Re:Sorry, no way. (Score:5, Informative)

              by Baricom ( 763970 ) on Friday May 18, 2007 @03:18AM (#19175643)

              I thought fair use was for allowing derivative work.
              Not quite. Copyright law specifically reserves the right to prepare derivative works (17 U.S.C. 106(2) [cornell.edu]).

              You're basically stating that if I were to use a small fraction of a media format, it's not under fair use - when it clearly is.
              Not necessarily. Fair use has four tests defined by 17 U.S.C 107(1-4) [cornell.edu]:
              • The purpose and character of the use;
              • The nature of the copyrighted work;
              • The amount of the work used in relation to a whole;
              • The effect on the market.
              Just because only a portion of the image is used (a fact I will dispute shortly) doesn't mean that you're off the hook, because you must consider the other three tests.

              A thumbnail is *not* the whole image.
              Your argument below this - that it's not the same image but merely a grid averaging the pixels of the original image - is somewhat compelling, but ultimately I would disagree with you here. If you stand by your argument, then surely it should also be legal to publish full-length MP3s of every song sold by the U.S. recording industry, as long as they're downsampled to 32 kbps?

              Of course, these are all images that are publicly displayed - and as such, fall smack into the fair use category.
              Just because something is publically displayed doesn't make it "fall smack into the fair use category." If it did, then I'd be able to hand out CDs on street corners, provided I recorded the music from the radio.

              By the by: if you have an artist paint in the missing detail in a clean-room setting (ie: the artist has never seen the orignial), the new work belongs to the artist.
              True, but that doesn't apply here. The painter is Google, and it has seen the original.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by juhaz ( 110830 )
                Your argument below this - that it's not the same image but merely a grid averaging the pixels of the original image - is somewhat compelling, but ultimately I would disagree with you here. If you stand by your argument, then surely it should also be legal to publish full-length MP3s of every song sold by the U.S. recording industry, as long as they're downsampled to 32 kbps?

                And if you stand by your argument, then surely it should not be legal to publish a synopsis of a book.

                Besides, 32kbps mp3 would have o
              • Well, fair use can deal with any manner of otherwise infringing behavior. It can apply to derivatives.

                If you stand by your argument, then surely it should also be legal to publish full-length MP3s of every song sold by the U.S. recording industry, as long as they're downsampled to 32 kbps?

                No. Each time fair use is invoked, it must be considered on the circumstances of the case at hand. It's entirely a case-by-case issue, and precedents are of somewhat limited utility, really.

        • Re:Sorry, no way. (Score:5, Funny)

          by snarlydwarf ( 532865 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:23PM (#19173211) Homepage
          You, sir, seem to have never watched CSI: modern computers (at least on TV) have infinite resolution.

          • Yeah, or "24." Anyone else think it brings the realism of these shows below even what they are already? Or are most people stupid enough to believe that you can "zoom in" to 320x200 video with infinite resolution?

        • Re:Sorry, no way. (Score:5, Funny)

          by ignavus ( 213578 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @10:42PM (#19173901)

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

          Been trying that with nude thumbnails, have you?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Fordiman ( 689627 )
        It's not the entire image. Technically, it's a grid of small parts of the image, averaged together. You lose a LOT of the original image that way.

        Put it this way: Say the original image is 1024x768 in size, and the thumbnail is 160x120. That's 786,432 pixels of image versus 19,200 pixels, or 1/40th of the image.

        I think 1/40th falls well under fair use, don't you?
        • It's kind of an interesting question. What if the image has artistic value and is not a simple representational photograph. It's quite possible to imagine it retaining that artistic value even in its reduced format. It's not a simple matter of "more than X% is infringement, less is fair use." It really depends on what the source material is, what the use is, and on a number of details of how it is used.

          Along these lines, it's significant that Google is using it for a search engine only. That bolsters t
      • Actually, fair use permits one to use any amount of a work, so long as it's fair. The amount and substaniality used is a factor in determining if it is fair, but it's not determinative on its own. Under the right circumstances, it can be fair to use an entire work, or unfair to use even very small portions.

    • Re:How is this different from text? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WoLpH ( 699064 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:57PM (#19173569)
      And Google has been sued (atleast in Belgium) for just that, some newspapers didn't want Google to show the text on there site, so they sued and won. In exchange Google removed those websites _entirely_ from there search results, I'm just wondering what they would have liked better ;)
      • IIRC the complaint was not that they showed small pieces of the information, but that they cached complete articles, making them available (for free) after they had been transferred to the (paying) archive section of the newspapers.

  • What happened to robots.txt? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:07PM (#19172485)
    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.

    • RTFA (Score:5, Informative)

      by dubonbacon ( 866462 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:11PM (#19172531)
      The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals undid a preliminary injunction, issued last year by a Los Angeles District Court, that had kept the Web search giant from displaying thumbnail-size photographs of images owned by Perfect 10 Inc. that other sites had improperly posted.

      • Re:RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Volante3192 ( 953645 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:41PM (#19172823)
        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.

        • Re:RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:58PM (#19173583) Homepage Journal

          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. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) *
          What I'm wondering is why go after the intermediate?

          Deep pockets.

          • That's why I'm wondering. Sure, Google's got a ginormous war chest that Perfect 10 is drooling over... But the problem is Google's got a ginormous war chest that they can spend on lawyers.

            Plus, since Google is acting as an intermediate, it's hardly a sure fire win. While original violaters would be a (relative) slam dunk, Google can pull tricks out of their magic bag...the DMCA safe harbor provision (even if it doesn't directly apply; i wouldn't put them past obfuscation), talk about showing good faith a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mgblst ( 80109 )
          You are wrong. How do you find a particular image with google image search? Sure, if you look for a particular file name, or it is linked to perfect 10 you can do a search for that. But it is not like they can submit an image, and google will find all same or similar images? So how does one go about finding sites that are posting their images? There is no real way.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bkr1_2k ( 237627 )
            They obviously found the images somehow, or there would be no lawsuit in the first place. It's not hard to do some selective word searching that describes the image content and find specific pictures, especially of "artistic" type images.
      • OK, so it touches on different laws. Even that isn't Google's fault. Weeding out copyright infringement isn't the search engine's responsibility.
    • Well, I don't know how to do it off the top of my head. I'd Google it, but I might end up with all these pornographic pictures... :^)

      Seriously, I agree that this is a good thing and there are ways to not have Google index your pages if you'd prefer that they don't. I have to admit, I'm curious if there's a way to not have Google do images or videos but do text. That seems like it would be a feature worth having...

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 18, 2007 @02:48AM (#19175525)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • There is no legal basis for robots.txt that i am aware of.

      What if I devise a system whereby i am allowed to touch all womens boobies unless they have a sign on their back saying "No touching my Boobies".

      Even if my system (no-touch-boobies.txt) becomes very popular I don't think it would give you any legal protection for touching a womens boobies unless it's recognised in law.

      Matt.
  • In the UK, we have a parallel situation with phone numbers. Anyone can 'search' for them in a phone book, but it is up to you to voluntarily opt out (ex directory). Unfortunately, several companies choose to ignore the opt-out listings ! It seems reasonable that the web directory (google) has a similar mechanism for avoiding unwanted listing (robots.txt).

  • And that sound... (Score:3, Funny)

    by adona1 ( 1078711 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:14PM (#19172565)
    is millions of 13 year olds cheering, as their first taste of pr0n surfing remains within their grasp.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, that sound is what millions of 13-year-olds are doing after hearing of this news...

      (...eewwwww...)

  • So this case has nothing to do with nudity? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joeflies ( 529536 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:19PM (#19172617)
    this appears to be a case of fair use over copyrighted work. So why's the nudity a part of the article headline?
    • It's a strategy the /. editors are using trying to get more people to RTFA.

      I'm not falling for it though.
      • Ha! I be they get $$ for click throughs! So... where exactly are those "Perfect 10" thumbnails?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by irtza ( 893217 )
        well, it may get more people to click through, but I doubt it will get more people to read. More likely a lot of disappointment.
      • So if, say, a certain photo.... of my goat... were being used in an infringing manner.... Could I sue Slashdot for linking to it, repeatedly?

        My goat is getting tired of being... spread... on the internet, for all to see!

    • Re:So this case has nothing to do with nudity? (Score:4, Informative)

      by thegrassyknowl ( 762218 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:44PM (#19172869)
      Because nudity draws the attention of everyone. It's about choosing words that attract the attention of people while they're skimming the article headlines. You need to draw them to your spamvertising site to get revenue. Nudity does that, as does the terrorist threat, and a few other select social buzzwords.

      But, I am glad to see that common sense is prevailing here. Score one for fair use. Maybe the world is changing as the courts start realising that copyright is not about making as much money as possible, but about encouraging the creation of new and interesting material for the benefit of society as a whole.
      • So goatse is a form of NUDE TERRORISM! Is that why so many people click on it?
      • Because nudity draws the attention of everyone. It's about choosing words that attract the attention of people while they're skimming the article headlines.

        And the only way to eventually reduce this titillation abuse by manipulative jerks is to allow as much nudity as possible in public in order to de-sensitize everyone from its effects. After all, Europe doesn't frown on bare-breasted females and many TV ads there featu...uh-oh, trouser tent time - BRB.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cheapy ( 809643 )
      Because it's not every day that one can combine porn and copyright issues.
    • This *is* slashdot...

  • Victory! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:22PM (#19172653) Homepage
    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.

  • Why must they mention porn? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AaxelB ( 1034884 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:24PM (#19172677)
    This is a really good thing, it sets a good precedent and so on and so forth, and is probably news worth posting on its own merit. Why must we promote it with "nude thumbnails" in the title? I mean, you should only add an empty promise of porn if the story can't stand on its own. With an interesting story, it's just distracting.

  • Hey, where are the links? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tatisimo ( 1061320 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @08:28PM (#19172709)
    In a past story, we got links to all kinds of piracy websites, but this time we get no links to pr0n... Am I missing something? Since when is linking to pr0n any more taboo than linking to piracy?
  • I mean, I don't know about you, but my thumbnails are always nude? Since when is this an issue?
  • 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.

    • Re:Missing something... (Score:5, Informative)

      by adminstring ( 608310 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:08PM (#19173073)
      The photographer's complaint was not with Google indexing and showing thumbnails from HIS website, but rather with Google indexing and showing thumbnails from OTHER sites which had illegal copies of his photographs. The photographer has no control over the robot.txt file of the other sites, and his complaint is that "...Google substantially assists websites to distribute their infringing copies to a worldwide market and assists a worldwide audience of users to access infringing materials."

      The real issue here is whether Google deserves a kind of common-carrier status, whereby they are not responsible for the content they index and return as a search result, or not. For example, the telephone company can't be sued if someone uses a telephone to plot a robbery because they are a "common carrier" and are not expected to know or censor the content that is shared over their network.

      My own personal opinion is that the nature of Google's business resembles a telephone company more than anything else - when their crawlers come across an image, Google has no idea if the image is hosted legally or not, and it places an undue burden on Google to expect them to figure out the legal status of each image they index and thumbnail.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 )
        I'm afraid that Google doesn't deserve common carrier status: they haven't earned it, due to their willingness to censor content with unfounded copyright claims, and to censor references to dissident content, etc. It's not that Google is bad, or historically outrageous about this, but engaging in that kind of censorship as a matter of policy can ruin your status as a common carrier.

  • Link, please ;-)

  • Precedent. With a T. (Score:5, Informative)

    by koreth ( 409849 ) * on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:07PM (#19173069)

    Operator precedence. [wikipedia.org] Legal precedent. [wikipedia.org]

    English: learn it and love it!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by codeButcher ( 223668 )

      You forgot the Moronic President from your list. Not that any one country has a monopoly on that, so I didn't bother to provide a link....

  • Subscription required? Here's a free site. (Score:4, Informative)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:25PM (#19173231) Journal
    Even if it is a free registration, this has been reported in many places, it's not hard to find a subscripton-free report, for example: here [itweek.co.uk]
  • > Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle

    Just in time for Sergei Brin's wedding!
    http://valleywag.com/tech/wedding-announcements/se rgey-brin-and-anne-wojcicki-260039.php [valleywag.com]

  • Would this still be forbidden for icons/smileys? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    IANAL, but from what I have gathered about fair use a sign of it being exceeded is if the third-party provides sufficient material that the likely user would not need to seek out the original source. Hence small thumbnails of professional photographs are not infringing.

    However - what if the image itself was the size of a smiley? What if Google Image Searching for 'afro smiley' displays an identical copy of the one you would find on a copyrighted, smiley-designing, ad-supported website? In this case the orig
    • IANAL either, but I would expect legislation to make clear that if such a thing could happen, it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to protect their precious work instead of showing it to the whole world and then complain. If that afro smiley is that precious, they should only show it to registered users after a password-protected login. In low resolution. With a user-specific digital fingerprint.

      I never understood why there is not a minimum burden on the copyright holder to adequately protect th

  • Link to the actual ruling (Score:5, Informative)

    by seaturnip ( 1068078 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @10:41PM (#19173889)

    Here [uscourts.gov]. 50 pages but a good read at least for me.

    Note that slashdotters are always complaining about judges not knowing anything about computers, but this court has a very good understanding of the relevant technical issues. They are fully aware of which servers are transmitting what data even when this is not immediately apparent to amateur users, and base part of their judgement on that basis.

  • Is this really surprising? (Score:3, Funny)

    by katterjohn ( 726348 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @11:36PM (#19174385)
    Judges prefer using Google to get porn too!

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