Perfect 10 loses case against Google

In a decision that clears the way for search engines to display thumbnail images of copyrighted material in search results without infringing on copyrights, a federal appeals court sided with Google, ruling against Perfect 10 magazine.

In 2004, Perfect 10, which publishes sexually explicit images, sued Google, alleging that the search giant's practice of displaying thumbnail pictures the magazine's content within its results pages, violated the company's copyright.

A lower court had blocked Google from displaying Perfect 10 content, but yesterday a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed the rulings, saying that thumbnails constitute fair use.

"We conclude that the significantly transformative nature of Google's search engine, particularly in light of its public benefit, outweighs Google's superseding and commercial uses of the thumbnails in this case," Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote for the panel. FULL STORY

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A lot of people surf Google images for free porn. Google, and the surfer, benefit from the work of content producers. Where is the content producer remedied for the use, and profit created, of his work?

Do you think this was a just ruling?

Here is another article on this with a more in depth legal analysis and a surprising revelation ... winning this perfect 10 case has set them up to win their book indexing case as a "fair use" WTF?

Is anyone else distrubed by this? Is it really now acceptable to display anyones images, books, etc. and copyright holders get NOTHING?

Has this altered anyones view on creating content?

The only webmasters losing money with Google Image search are hobbymasters. This traffic is no different than regular SE traffic. I'd pay to have every single image on my sites appear high in the listings.

But if you somehow do have a problem with their image search, block it in robots.txt.

User-agent: googlebot-image
Disallow: /

http://services.google.com/urlconsole/controller

I do think this Perfect 10 case, and several others currently in the pre-trial stages are going to be EXTREMELY important in respect of copyrights when it comes to the web.

There are rumors circulating that Google purchased YouTube so that someone would try suing them, so that they could set precedent about being able to distribute others copyrighted materials, it now looks like the judge in this case has already started work on allowing copyright laws to be violated with no recourse for the copyright holders.

The next couple of years are going to be really interesting to watch in terms of how the web grows and especially how large companies such as Google, embrace and use (or abuse) the current stem of organic growth in terms of design, content and functionality, whilst an organic internet is definately something that should be embraced, it shouldnt be embraced at the cost of the rights of individuals.

Regards,

Lee