Adult site sues Amazon over sexy images

Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 is suing Amazon.com, alleging that the e-tailer's search engine is violating copyright law by displaying thousands of images from its Web site without permission.

"It is Perfect 10's contention that 'search engines' such as A9.com and Google are displaying hundreds of thousands of adult images, from the most tame to the most exceedingly explicit, to draw massive traffic to their Web sites, which they convert into ad revenue or sales revenue," the publisher said in a statement.

Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Perfect 10 filed a similar lawsuit against Google in November and said it has sent numerous notices of infringement to both Google and Amazon that have been ignored.

Representatives from Google and Amazon did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The lawsuit against Amazon was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday. A motion for preliminary injunction, that was due to be filed on Friday, asks the court to prevent Amazon's A9 search unit from displaying and distributing the images, said Russell Frackman, an attorney representing Perfect 10.

The lawsuits allege infringement of more than 1,000 images. Under U.S. copyright law, defendants could be liable for up to $150,000 for each infraction, Frackman said.

The Google lawsuit has been tied up in discovery disputes, he added.

The search sites are displaying reduced-size images of Perfect 10's, but also larger images and links to many other Web sites that are showing full sizes of the copyright images, Frackman said.

Porn is driving searches, and thus ad sales, on the Web, said Norm Zada, a former professor and IBM computer science research staff member who launched Perfect 10 magazine in 1997. "Overture's Key Selector Tool indicates that most searches on the Internet are sex-related," he said in a statement.

As search engines expand into images and video, they are increasingly at risk of becoming targets of copyright lawsuits. On Thursday, Google scrambled to remove movies and TV episodes that were uploaded to its new video search site that infringed on copyright.

The situation is more dire after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that companies can be held legally liable for copyright piracy that takes place on their online networks.

[System Tyrant]

Suggestion

Secure your images so they can't do it.

[hion2000]

Here's a great idea

Why not remove all references to Perfect 10 from the search engine + ads? :)

[System Tyrant]

Suggestion

Secure your images so they can't do it.

[hion2000]

Here's a great idea

Why not remove all references to Perfect 10 from the search engine + ads? :)

[Bill Dautrive]

Not a surprise

Given the apparent belief at Google that they have the right to index anything they want, this sort of thing is going to happen to them more and more, and will probably lead to their downfall.

All they need to do is change their policies and only index data that has explicit permission given to searching from companies like Google.

[calbear--2008]

No, That's Wrong

These frivolous lawsuits won't do anything. All Google is doing is essentially linking to content, the reproduction of the content through a small thumbnail is to help people figure out where they are linking to.

Any site, especially one that serves premium content, that doesn't keep their content protected through authentication is pretty dumb anyway.

Under this presumption, anyone that has a trademarked name can sue Google for using their name in their search results w/o explicit permission?

By the way, I'm sure you can IN FACT opt out of getting your cotent indexed, it's called bot and spider blocking.

[unknown unknown]

Reply

there is already something of an opt-out system. It's as simply as putting a meta tag at the top of your page that tells spiders not to index the page.
Such problems are easily fixed by Perfect 10 and others. The server can check the Referer block in the HTTP header and deny access to the images accordingly (for example if the link to the image was from google.com).

[Bill Dautrive]

Not a surprise

Given the apparent belief at Google that they have the right to index anything they want, this sort of thing is going to happen to them more and more, and will probably lead to their downfall.

All they need to do is change their policies and only index data that has explicit permission given to searching from companies like Google.

[calbear--2008]

No, That's Wrong

These frivolous lawsuits won't do anything. All Google is doing is essentially linking to content, the reproduction of the content through a small thumbnail is to help people figure out where they are linking to.

Any site, especially one that serves premium content, that doesn't keep their content protected through authentication is pretty dumb anyway.

Under this presumption, anyone that has a trademarked name can sue Google for using their name in their search results w/o explicit permission?

By the way, I'm sure you can IN FACT opt out of getting your cotent indexed, it's called bot and spider blocking.

[unknown unknown]

Reply

there is already something of an opt-out system. It's as simply as putting a meta tag at the top of your page that tells spiders not to index the page.
Such problems are easily fixed by Perfect 10 and others. The server can check the Referer block in the HTTP header and deny access to the images accordingly (for example if the link to the image was from google.com).

[202578300049013666264380294439]

Idiots sue because they're too ignorant to do things the right way.

Perhaps they need to update (or create) a robots.txt file.

http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm

Otherwise the search engine is going to index everything it can find.

[201293546946733175101343322673]

Well...

Do you really think those dixkheads in adult industry are smart enough to know this? :)

Amen, Brother!

What struck me as odd also is the fact that this guy believes his own bs----I didn't know that most searches on the Internet are related to sex. :-7

Talk about self-serving BS. Yeah, they could use a robots.txt file...but then, that'd be too easy and wouldn't allow them to bleed dollars out of Google like they probably want to do. Sad.

[202578300049013666264380294439]

Idiots sue because they're too ignorant to do things the right way.

Perhaps they need to update (or create) a robots.txt file.

http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm

Otherwise the search engine is going to index everything it can find.

[201293546946733175101343322673]

Well...

Do you really think those dixkheads in adult industry are smart enough to know this? :)

Amen, Brother!

What struck me as odd also is the fact that this guy believes his own bs----I didn't know that most searches on the Internet are related to sex. :-7

Talk about self-serving BS. Yeah, they could use a robots.txt file...but then, that'd be too easy and wouldn't allow them to bleed dollars out of Google like they probably want to do. Sad.

[ajayxx]