CNet News – February 21, 2006:
A federal judge has ruled that portions of Google’s popular image search feature, which displays small thumbnail versions of images found on other Web sites, likely violate U.S. copyright law.
U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled Friday that Perfect 10, an adult-oriented Web site featuring “beautiful natural women” in the nude, has shown that Google image search probably infringes copyright law “by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs.”
The Los Angeles judge said he would award Perfect 10 a preliminary injunction against Google, and gave lawyers for both sides until March 8 to propose the injunction’s wording.
Google said on Tuesday that it plans to appeal the injunction, and predicted it will have no effect on the “vast majority” of its image searches.
Whatever happened to the day when folks actually competed with their products and not in court? This is really getting out of hand — especially in the tech sector. Is this what they teach in engineering and business school now?
Innovation in this country is grinding to a halt as everything has to go through the courts first and I am getting sick of it. Everyone wants the status quo and no change.
I think China has the right idea — to hell with intellectual property rights.
Oh and one other thing to go with Nathan’s comment… maybe if they stopped putting these samples online where Google could find them, it would be good for the internet as a whole any way .. That way I would not have to sort through the garbage when I am doing an image search. Yeah, I know that I can put google in “clean” mode, but that’s not perfect.
These porn sites should have a home page that says “porn inside” in text and nothing else. Then, when you sign up and pay you get all the porn you want and the rest of this crap stays off the net.
It’s a waste of bandwidth and waste of time.
I find it interesting that Google was only showing thumbnails -undoubtably as a way of avoiding infringement – only to find that even the thumbnails are “valuable”, for use on cell-phones.
No wonder the Judge has ordered both sides to submit a joint proposal for the wording of the injunction.
A while ago our Sonic Wall firewall started blocking Google Images altogether. Probably due to school computer labs complaining. I (and probably many others) was able to convince Sonic Wall otherwise, but it strikes me that the XXX domain that John lobbied for could have eliminated a lot of situations like this by making porn and its ancillary parts easier to filter out.
You will never get the xxx doman as long as you have the theocrats in power.
Mike T
The saddest thing is that these sites probably gain traffic and income by having their content show up in a Google search in the first place.
Another example of cutting your face off to “cure” a stuffy nose.
That judge is completely nuts with no idea of how internet works.
Good. Now people wont be tempted to look at porn so easy.
Yep, now they’ll just have to go to Guba.com – and click the box saying “I’m over 18” – so they can see thumbnails for every picture and video on usenet.
Is that scary, or what?
re: Guba.com…
And don’t forget to download the many, free “samples” while you’re there. 🙂
The best and most useful Feature of a search engine is Image search.
Once again Greed and ignorance set in.
They are making much more out of this than is needed because Blank ity blank is ignorant to how it works.
As a Webmaster thier is a very simple text file that you put up on your server to prevent Robots from searching your website.
The solution is simple:
——————————
Search companies should set up a page where webmasters can opt in to Allowing Google etc. search your site or portions of your site for images.
Its automated and very simple to set up.
99% will opt in for this service.
You have to be a fool not to!
Its a win-win for websurfer, webmaster, advertiser, and google.
I’m sure the buck dosn’t stop here now they are going to go after bandwith thiefs,
bloggers and people that set up homepages at places like myspace, forums linking to images on another persons website with out asking for permission.
Richard Brill
I like your idea the best of all those suggested. It shows sound judgment and a workable solution.
Now can I have that $10 you promised me.
Mr. Fussion.
Thank You I think? Ok heres a jackson via paypal just in case 🙂
The president of an off shore bank will send an e-mail confirming everything.
This question has been revisited many times
It states that it
“probably infringes copyright law “by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs.” ”
Thier hasn’t been any proof that it does infringe upon copyrite law at all
Google and other search engines will not visit your website if you ask them not to.. You simply put a 1 line text file on your website.
If you can’t do that then you certainly can’t build a website.
If you purchase a websdite from GO daddy The file is up on the server.
Google also asks the user if they want to view thier content censored or not. the default is to protect visitors from seeing thumbnails of adult content.
If information is on your server and someone links to it are they steeling your content?
As a webmaster you have ways to protect your self.
I do not have adult content on my website. However on the flip side
Parents need to be parents and not blame others for thier lack of parenting.
Shelter your children from the real world.
Hide the liquor, car keys, smokes, pills, glue, magazines, TV, radio, Howard Stern, and internet from your children.
The time has come for an adult .XXX domain.
Turn off the internet and stop innovating in any meaningful way. Somebody somewhere will claim that you have infringed on their patent or their copyright.
I am all for folks making money off their work, but thinking you have to get a nickle for every eyeball or ear that might ever come across your work is nuts. There is no creation from Porn to Picaso that is worth that much.
If the MPAA, RIAA, and Perfect 10 Porn Inc. think that we can’t do without their product, they are sadly mistaken. Without the latest boy band, Brokeback Mountain, and nudie pic, the world will still go on just fine.
As someone has already mentioned on here, having your stuff indexed will generate ten times more traffic and money than you would EVER lose to theft, but no one can think that way.
With Google, it has been like this time and again.
1. Scan all books
Arrgh… we might lose a sale
2. Index all web sites
Arrgh… you can’t cache my content!
3. Index all pics
Arrrgghhh…. you can’t show my copyrighted
nudie pic!
Get real.