Adult Website Tries To Censor Google Image Search

[DYABLO 0]

The publisher of adult website and magazine Perfect 10 has asked a Los Angeles court to prohibit Google from copying and displaying Perfect 10s copyrighted images in the search results of its image search tool.
Perfect 10 sued Google in November of 2004. It says that Google is displaying hundreds of thousands of adult images, "from the most tame to the most exceedingly explicit, to draw massive traffic to its website, which it is converting into hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising revenue."

Perfect 10 claims that under the guise of being a search engine, Google is displaying, free of charge, thousands of copies of the best images from Perfect 10, Playboy, nude scenes from major movies, nude images of supermodels, as well as extremely explicit images of all kinds.

The publisher contends that it has sent 35 notices of infringement to Google covering over 6,500 infringing URLs, but that Google continues to display over 3,000 Perfect 10 copyrighted images without authorization.

According to Dr. Norm Zada, the founder of Perfect 10 Magazine and a former Stanford, UCLA, and Columbia University professor and IBM Computer Science Research Staff Member, who began publishing Perfect 10 Magazine in 1997, most of the traffic to search engines is sex-related.

"Overture's Key Selector Tool indicates that most searches on the internet are sex-related," says Zada. "Google's extraordinary gain in market cap from nothing a few years ago to close to eighty billion dollars, is more due to their massive misappropriation of intellectual property than anything else," says Zada.

According to Perfect 10, Google will likely argue that because it provides a "search function," it should be excused from liability for copyright infringement. From Perfect 10's standpoint, Google isn't directing people where to find Perfect 10 images that would be Perfect 10 Magazine and perfect10.com rather, it is displaying Perfect 10 images and allowing users to download Perfect 10 images itself. To the extent that Google does direct users searching for Perfect 10 pictures anywhere, "it is virtually always to a website which misappropriated those images, not to perfect10.com."

Zada continued: "Google is currently displaying over 3,000 Perfect 10 copyrighted images and linking them to websites containing numerous other Perfect 10 copyrighted images and in many cases ads for which Google earns revenue."

"Google is no longer a legitimate search engine," he said. "It is a commercial advertising operation determined to increase ad revenue regardless of what rights it tramples on in the process."

"In some cases, as many as 96% of Google search results on Perfect 10 model names go not to Perfect10.com, but to infringing Google AdSense partners of which Google has received notice," says Zada. "That's not legitimate search."

Any website publisher can sign up for Google AdSense. It's an easy way for publishers to display Google ads those being paid for by its AdWords customers on their content pages. AdWords customers pay Google and Google pays a commission to AdSense publishers. So Google can maximise its revenues by maximising the traffic that it sends to AdSense affiliates. Perfect 10 does not suggest that Google is weighting its search results in favour of AdSense-supported sites; but it does argue that Google profits directly from the popularity of porn, and its particular concern is that it profits from Perfect 10's porn that has been stolen by others.

Zada believes that the outcome of Perfect 10's motion for preliminary injunction should have a major impact not only on Perfect 10, but also on traditional media outlets which are losing the ad revenue war to search engines, in part because of all the nude and semi-nude images search engines offer for free.

Right now, he says, consumers who want to view a nude scene involving Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, or other Hollywood beauties, can view that scene for free by visiting a search engine without purchasing the DVD. "If all an infringer needs to avoid liability is to provide some sort of a 'search function,' that will be the end of intellectual property in this country," says Zada.

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Notice from BuffaloHELP:

Edited the topic title

Edited September 1, 2005 by BuffaloHELP (see edit history)

[baffo 0]

If they start censoring the content that google provides that wouldn't be a powerfull and good search eingine anymore. If the problem is pornography and stuff like that the only way not to get that stuff in your searches is to use appropriate words to search and to be more exact what you want to find. But there are also people who are searching for pornographic content, also pictures. And anyway google is a good search eingine so if you don't search for pornographic contend you'll not get displayed it. All depends on what are you searching for.

[Saint_Michael 3]

thats funny though, i have a feeling the perfect 10 is running out of money so might as well do a little suing to get back in business, wvwn though they are not broke at all.still funny though.thats means i could sue them for list my graphics on their website

[Dragonfly 0]

Those who search google will ultimately go to their website and thus increase their website visitors. It is somewhat difficult to understand the stand of perfect 10. But people are very clever today. They don't want to pay when they can actually see the same pictures through google image search if that is true. Google search are also like photo album. One of the websites I'm looking after has a photo album which is not programmed one, it is updated manually using dreamweaver each time and google has indexed all the photos. And since google way of displaying images is actually very comfortable to see, I was surprise that google has presented the pictures in my website with a better view and angle... lol And they bring in more visitors to my site which is a good thing. May be perfect 10 doesn't get anymore paid customer and peeping toms are using google search only!! lolzzzz

[thablkpanda 0]

Honestly, who wouldn't sue google with a decent lawful reason? If they're providing copyrighted material free of charge, then They're potentially stealing (I think i misread that article though).If you COULD (legitimately (sp?) and legally) sue google for a 'crime' why not attempt to make a few hundred grand? or millions in some cases.Panda

[nelimitat 0]

I don't think that they really have the power to block Google Search Engine. I have searched about this, bit didn't found anything interesting.

[moldboy 0]

Google is a dump computer that strings things together and follows links, as a website adminsitrator it is your job to make the search engines not index your pages, google makes this very easy by offering remove from google links, but you can also use robots.txt and other tools to tell google to make them go away, this company and others have done this in the past, and google has removed the thumbnails, for obvous reasons. But because the administrators are two dumb the google crawlers just find his site, and say Ohh, I don't have that, perhapse I should add to my index, is there a reason I shouldn't... NO... alright then. Google has no ability to control where their spiders go, it just human, eh, spider nature

[PhxStorks 0]

Yes there are ways of keeping google from indexing your images or removing them if they are already indexed. Here's a link to read the details: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?rd=1

However, I think what the article was saying is that the people are suing google because google is indexing THEIR COPYRIGHTED images that other people have stolen and have placed on their sites. Instead of contacting the (apparently hundreds) of websites that ARE PROVIDING this copyrighted content for FREE via google's image search feature, (because they HAVE NOT blocked google from indexing these copyrighted images) they have TRIED to get google to remove their COPYRIGHTED images from the index, that are located on sites other than their own.

rather, it is displaying Perfect 10 images and allowing users to download Perfect 10 images itself. To the extent that Google does direct users searching for Perfect 10 pictures anywhere, "it is virtually always to a website which misappropriated those images, not to perfect10.com."

Their only other option is to sue the hundreds of websites that have apparently STOLEN their copyrighted images and have them remove the images. Which would be easier: To sue 1 large company or hundreds of small ones?

It also seems to me that they have repeatedly tried to get google to remove these images & it hasn't done so. Standing behind their "oh we're just a little search engine" routine. Not taking responsibility for the images that it's searches produce, EVEN IF they have been notified the images are copyrighted and need to be removed.

According to Perfect 10, Google will likely argue that because it provides a "search function," it should be excused from liability for copyright infringement.

Remember when Copyshops were sued for MAKING COPIES of pages of books to give out to teachers classes. The Authors/book sellers were loosing money because the students were given the information by KINKOS instead of having to purchase the books. And the copyshops were sued for allowing/helping the teachers to make the copies. SAME THING in my opinion. Google is PROFITING from allowing these images to be searched by web-users.
--Jane

[mendezgarcia 0]

stupid charge. google is FREE; how could they earn profit?oh yeah, adverts, but I don't think linking to their images is "advertising".