Pornographers ruining the Internet

[rabbit]

Could this be the beginning of the end of Google Image Search? (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060222/ts_afp/usinternetmediasexjusticegoogle_060222032100)
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Internet giant Google Inc. infringed copyright rules by posting thumbnail-size photos from other websites on its search results pages, a US judge said in a ruling issued.

US District Judge Howard Matz's ruling, handed down in Los Angeles, stems from a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the pornography firm Perfect 10 Inc., which accused Google of breaching on its copyrights.

The type of search with which Perfect 10 took issue is Google's "Image Search" function, which returns a page with tiny images -- known as thumbnails -- that fit the searcher's query.

The image search function also allows searchers to view the image as it appears on the page.

The judge ruled that because Google receives advertising money from offering search functions, it is not entitled to the same level of free use of the images as other entities would be.GIS is one of the greatest inventions in the history of the Internet. I use it on an almost daily basis (and not for porn). You'd think these people would take into account all the traffic GIS is driving to their sites. They should thank them instead of suing them. :thumdown:

[Ankf00]

boo. hiss.

[nrc]

This just in: I'm suing "Perfect 10" for false advertising. I guess "Perfect 7 1/2" doesn't have quite the ring to it.

I didn't understand this suit when it was filed and I don't understand it now. The notion that the tiny thumbnails GIS presents have any intrinsic value as anything other than a pointer to the original image is just stupid. Telephone wallpapers? GIS thumbnails are less than half the size of a typical phone wallpaper. With all the, um, content on the web nobody who wants cheesecake for their phone is going to be using GIS thumbnails of marginally attractive Perfect 10 girls.

But beyond that, there's already a widely accepted mechanism for any site to opt out having their content indexed and presented by search engines. If, as implied above, all this does is get Perfect 10 out of the image search results then they've just spent money on legal fees for something they could have achieved by putting a two line "robots.txt" file on their site rejecting search engines.

This is fair use in the same way that small excerpts of the text from a web page is fair use. The only way Perfect 10 is being harmed is when other sites illegally post their images and GIS indexes them with links to those sites. But Google already has a process for dealing with cases like that.

Frankly I think the bottom line is that Norm Zada, the publisher of Perfect 10, is a nutjob. He made a fortune and decided to blow it on a magazine that appealed to hardly anyone. Now he thinks that it's everyone else's fault that he's not making a fortune on it. So he has been suing anyone he can blame it, mostly without success.

[RacinM3]

But wait, what's the crux of the ruling? Is it that Google shows the tiny thumbnails (which are pretty much useless unless you click on them), or that you have the option of viewing them without actually viewing the source website?

If it's the latter, it seems that the issue could be handled rather easily - just remove that option.

[RichK]

I didn't understand this suit when it was filed and I don't understand it now.

Well, we are all talking about Perfect 10 today....what better way to advertise than to pay some legal fees & sue Google?