Google Sued for Failing to Remove Photos from Search Results
Perfect 10, an Internet pornography company, is suing Google for failing to remove images from its search results. The company claims Google provides free access to images for which it would otherwise charge money. This Los Angeles Times article makes it sound like Google isn’t making Perfect 10’s content available directly, but is including search results for Web sites violating Perfect 10’s copyright.
"In 2002, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that search engines could not display full-sized images without linking back to the website upon which they were posted.
But they can display smaller images, or thumbnails, without infringing copyrights. Google displays its results in postage-sized images but links to websites that Perfect 10 says illegally display full-sized images."
Red Herring has more of the legal details.
After the blog meeting the other night, we talked briefly about the possibility of receiving pornography via feeds and how that would work, especially with today’s commercial models. Is it possible to send feeds only to paid subscribers? How would a company prevent a paying customer from posting a feed on a public Web site or using a public aggregator? Can something be done with authentication, meaning a feed would look for a key in a specific aggregator before transmitting its content? Or what about sending partial or strategically censored content with a link? Paying subscribers can then log in to get the appropriate access.
