Perfect10, an adult entertainment company filed lawsuits against both Google and Amazon for copyright infringement. The two lawsuits, filed separately claim the two companies’ utilizations of photos from Perfect 10 when listing the sight is a violation of copyright laws regarding pictures they own.
According to a UPI article earlier today, Norm Zada, head honcho over at Perfect10 said the two companies rely on unauthorized display of copyrighted material under the guise of providing a search function as part of their business model, calling it “misappropriated intellectual property.”
Perfect10 and Zada are attacking Google claiming “Google is not a search engine anymore,” and “They are a commercial enterprise. They are listing pages first that are advertising with Google.”
The same UPI article quoted Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation said this is really a much bigger issue over the nature of copyright infringement itself.
Perfect 10 cited 34 cease and desist requests sent to Google, saying “there are still 1000 URL we have given them that haven’t been altered at all.”
First and most importantly will be the copyright issues. Google’s goal is to help people find information. Period. They have competitors like Yahoo and MSN and Ask Jeeves, which all have something similar but Google’s plan is to make searching for relevant information quick and easy. The nature of the beast means that some images will be used in those search queries.
Schultz disagreed with Perfect10 though saying Google has worked within the confines of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is the basis for this lawsuit. He claimed Google worked within the confines of the law and was therefore protected. Perfect10 obviously thinks otherwise.
In any event, this lawsuit will certainly feel out the limits of the DMCA and how it applies to companies, particularly those who believe they are working within the confines of the law. Other companies will certainly be watching the result because one can only assume that if Google were to lose this, not only would they be open to suits to many other companies who use images for their business but also other companies like the aforementioned Yahoo and MSN will also be liable for images they use.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
