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Porn Site Sues Google Over Linked Images 386

Posted by timothy from the secondary-links-may-not-be-work-safe dept.
Joel from Sydney writes "According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Google is being sued for copyright infringement by a Los Angeles-based porn site. The complaint revolves around Google's Image Search, which allegedly displays copyrighted pictures and links to unauthorised mirrors. The complaint also alleges that Google Search is providing 'links to password hacking sites that provide ways to gain illegal access to [the complainant's] website.' Where will it all end? (Note: free registration may be required to view the article)." The same AP story is being carried by eWeek, no registration required. Reader Nath adds "Interesting that there's no Thank You from the site for the traffic that Google sends its way due to search hits; are these companies forgetting the important role that search engines play in their business?"
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Porn Site Sues Google Over Linked Images More

Porn Site Sues Google Over Linked Images

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  • What a buffoon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Penguinshit ( 591885 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:44AM (#10896103) Homepage Journal

    He can't insert a ROBOTS.TXT file and can't seem to handle his passwd file, and he wants to sue Google for his ineptitude?

    I hope they squash him and don't give him a plug-nickel in "settlement".

    • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Informative)

      by bsharitt ( 580506 ) <(moc.ttirahs) (ta) (tegdirb)> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:50AM (#10896135) Journal
      According to teh article it seems to stem more from Google linking to sites that have illegal copies of thier images and ways to illegally get into their site.

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Yer Mom ( 78107 )
        So use Google to find those sites, and then sue them.

        It's a shame judges aren't allowed to slap plaintiffs and their lawyers, it really is.

        • Re:What a buffoon (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jc42 ( 318812 )
          It's a shame judges aren't allowed to slap plaintiffs and their lawyers, it really is.

          What country do you live in? In the US, and in quite a lot of other countries, judges can and do impose fines for frivolous or harrassing lawsuits. And there's even a legal term ("barratry") to cover this sort of crime. Granted, you don't read about it often, but this might be because the plaintiff's lawyers advise against filing suit.

          Now, IANAL, so I won't try to give details. Maybe a real lawyer or two would like

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 )
        First thing Google should do: take any of these whiners out of the index and see how it helps their business. Oh? You're complaining? Well, it seems that you think that Google can list whatever they want, instead of what their robots find. Google was just making _extra sure_ that nobody would stumble onto your precious copywrited content by taking you out of the index... and make linking to and from you cause negative Googleranking.

      • Still a buffoon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mblase ( 200735 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @02:15PM (#10900543)
        According to teh article it seems to stem more from Google linking to sites that have illegal copies of thier images and ways to illegally get into their site.

        So do what everyone else does: use Google to find those sites, then send them cease-and-desist letters and cancel any passwords they list. Don't blame the messenger.
    • He can't insert a ROBOTS.TXT file and can't seem to handle his passwd file, and he wants to sue Google for his ineptitude?

      He is suing because Google has indexed unauthorized mirror sites, not his own site. This is a bit scary, because I think what Google is doing might actually be considered illegal, because the pictures are copyrighted.

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jondor ( 55589 ) <gerhard AT frappe DOT xs4all DOT nl> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:58AM (#10896167) Homepage
        So? Almost everything on the web is copyrighted.

        The moment someone on the web cannot link to copyrighted material anymore (which is as stupid as not being allowed to have a referencelist in the back of a book) there's going to be very little left to link to.

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:59AM (#10896172)
        Illegal how? What if I tell you that www.bazbar.org has copies of pictures from www.foobar.com that they're offering for free download? Am *I* now breaking the law? That's all google is doing really. They don't even know that they're doing it, as it's entirely automated, so there isn't even any willfullness about it.
        • "Illegal how? What if I tell you that www.bazbar.org has copies of pictures from www.foobar.com that they're offering for free download? Am *I* now breaking the law? That's all google is doing really. They don't even know that they're doing it, as it's entirely automated, so there isn't even any willfullness about it."
          • Tell that to Napster... (the old-school Napster)

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Secret Agent X23 ( 760764 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:09AM (#10896737)
        He is suing because Google has indexed unauthorized mirror sites, not his own site. This is a bit scary, because I think what Google is doing might actually be considered illegal, because the pictures are copyrighted.

        IANAL, so I can't speak to the actual, technical legal isssue -- but it seems to me highly unreasonable to expect a third party like Google to vet all the sites and images it links to for copyright violations. I can understand why Perfect 10 is suing the mega-popular American company with deep pockets rather than the offshore web sites owned by people who may very well be impossible to trace. But is Google to blame for that?

        Now, the article didn't say anything about this, but I wonder if Perfect 10 had previously identified these sites and requested that Google remove them from its index? If so, I'd be more sympathetic to their case.

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Eric Giguere ( 42863 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:15AM (#10896932) Homepage Journal

        He is suing because Google has indexed unauthorized mirror sites

        Really, it comes down to this: he's suing Google because he can't sue those mirror sites. They're just following the Lawyer's Axiom of Transitivity: if A is related to B and B is related to C then if A sues B and B has no money, then A must sue C.

        Eric
        Why the Vioxx recall [ericgiguere.com] reduced spam (parody)
    • Not having a robots.txt file doesn't give google permission to use his content. If Google takes a query by you, looks all over the net for images you might want, and then displays a page with other people's copywritten work for you, that sounds like pretty clear copyright infringement to me.

      Now, if google said "Here is a list of places you can find these images", that's different. Fine line, but line none-the-less.

    • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Funny)

      by Chembryl ( 596546 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:06AM (#10896204)
      Show us the pictures and we will decide!

    • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Informative)

      by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@nospam.jwsmythe.com> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:38AM (#10896307) Homepage Journal
      Well, there are two things that they're complaining about. I may have a bit more understanding of this, since I do quite a bit of work with the adult industry.

      Joe user wants into some-porn-site.com, he goes to google and types in "some-porn-site.com passwordz", and probably gets 1000 responses with sites that are listing their 'hacked' passwords.

      They get the majority of these passwords with programs like Access Diver (I think that's the name), and a very few where the hackers actually find an exploit in the billing companies password submission script, to insert their own passwords. These passwords are almost never gathered from the password itself. Hell, the format for an Apache password file is [user]:[crypted password], so the password file really doesn't do you much good, other than giving you a list of usernames to plug into Access Diver.

      A few sites I deal with show up regularly on about 1000 of these sites. Honest. It's a pretty serious problem for a lot of adult webmasters. We have routines in place to take care of the problem before it becomes a problem, but 10,000 extra users in an hour can be enough to knock a server off the Internet (the slashdot effect is nothing compared to these sites), and if undetected quickly can effectively shut down a site simply because of the bandwidth bill.

      Our passwords die after about 3 minutes of being abused, but back in the day, we'd see over 100k users come in from one 'stolen' password. We still see the users coming in, but they're all being rejected, which is fine by me. Hell, the biggest site they hit is only $25/year. Who can't afford $2/month for porn?

      It only takes a half way decent programmer a little bit of time to fix this. Hell, I wrote the first version of a protection script years ago, in about an hour.

      But, this was only half of their complaint. What they're trying to pitch a fit about is the fact that Google links their copyrighted images on a site that has them illegally posted.

      We get a lot of this too. People steal the images from our big sites, even though they have a watermark on them, in them, etc, etc. These people don't even bother to rename the pictures most of the time, so they still have our serialized filename on them. Brilliant. Anyways, a lot of these people are hard to take down. We can complain to ISP's, but sometimes that's close to impossible. I don't speak Russian, Chineses, etc, etc, so how do I call to complain at a foreign ISP? We keep a small staff fairly busy tracking down these sites, and trying to get our content removed.

      But the real truth is, he hopes to make some money off of Google, which he'll probably never see. The bigger truth is that eWeek carried the story, and it was picked up by AP, which means it'll show up in publications all over the world. It'll mostly be carried as either a novelty story, or something of how evil porn is to attack Google. Regardless, his site name has been thrown up in front of millions of people. He's charging $25.50/month. If he gets even a small percentage of those people to buy, that's mad money. Well, the really mad money is in the number of people who will buy a subscription, forget they have it and let it recur for years. Or the ones too embarassed to call to cancel, and just live with it til their wife finds out. :)

      So Slashdot just helped him make a fortune. How many horny girlfriend-less guys are there on here, who would pay for a bit of porn. :) Lucky for me, I have a girlfriend, and I have all the free porn a guy could ever want. It's really tough doing work for so many diverse companies, I get just about anything that's Internet based for free. :)

      • Re:What a buffoon (Score:5, Insightful)

        by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @05:57AM (#10896537)
        Hell, the format for an Apache password file is [user]:[crypted password], so the password file really doesn't do you much good

        Actually, it does you a lot of good if you are into cracking .htaccess security. Just because that password is hashed doesnt mean it cant be bruteforced (which I admit can take some time), and I will wager than 90% of passwords on any site you have worked on where the user gets to choose their password can be cracked with a fairly simple wordlist.

        A 'hacker' (using the term loosly) that want their porn for themselves only needs to get one of those passwords, and even someone planning to share will only need a few.

        Other than that glaring inaccuracy, a very interesting post :o)
    • That would spoil their chances of getting rich quick. What's the betting that all involved in the case, if/once it goes to court, suddenly start getting lots of porn spam?
    • No joke, Maybe he should sue is WebMaster on grounds of shear dumb4$$ as well. Funny but PlayBoy, VoyeurWeb and other majors don't have this problem. Then again they aren't running their site on a Pentium 90 either.

  • Hrm... Perfect 10? (Score:5, Funny)

    by oldosadmin ( 759103 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:44AM (#10896106) Homepage
    If I remember correctly, their porno was no good anyway.

    Geeks, boycott Perfect 10! They'll run out of money!

  • All they have to do (Score:3, Funny)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:45AM (#10896113)
    is change the web addresses of their images, since google never updates their image database...
    • Please read the summary and article. The porn site isn't sueing because google is showing images from their servers, but because it is displaying images that have been stolen and hosted on "unortherized mirrors"

  • It's not Google's fault. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by neuro.slug ( 628600 ) <neuro__ AT hotmail DOT com> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:46AM (#10896119)
    If they got the pictures, then Mr. pr0n company needs to somehow protect them better. And it's not like it's Ansel Adams photography either.

    And instead of suing Google for providing a link to some page that allows one to exploit their site, why not make something more secure?

    Yet another company guilty of doing things The American Way.

    -- n

    • How things change... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:09AM (#10896215)
      If they got the pictures, then Mr. pr0n company needs to somehow protect them better.

      It's funny how people's morals change to suit them. Nicking images off someone else's site without permission used to be regarded as rude at best, and very rude indeed if you were actually linking using their bandwidth from your site. That was nothing to do with copyright (though I suspect that issue is pretty clear-cut here anyway) and simply a matter of polite netiquette. When did nicking someone else's graphics become socially acceptable?

    • Re:It's not Google's fault. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:46AM (#10896339) Homepage Journal
      "And instead of suing Google for providing a link to some page that allows one to exploit their site, why not make something more secure?"

      Hate to sound like I'm defending them, but they can't. You can't prevent an image from being reposted elsewhere. All it takes is to subscribe to the site and capture the images. They're really in the wrong business if they're facing serious damages because other sites are carrying their images.

      I've ... researched this topic quite heavily. It'd be very easy for them to generate revenue by these mirror sites. Put their name on the images, assuming they're not doing that already. Why? Because when one spots a pic they like, and they wanna see more from the same series, one needs to know where the images came from.

      There's opportunity everywhere. :P

  • sigh.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 )
    They should learn to use robots.txt files, and as for the other sites, it's those that are infringing on copyrights, not Google so if they should sue any, it's the wrong company. But, of course, Google probably have more money they can try to get. :-P

    Google should just say "oh, sorry we listed you incorrectly" and block their domain. :-P
    • Google should just say "oh, sorry we listed you incorrectly" and block their domain. :-P

      Well they should, but i doubt they will. I might just not be a smart thing to do when facing a lawsuit, unless they are going to agree they where wrong in the first place...

  • I hope that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:47AM (#10896124) Homepage
    Google's response is to remove any link to their website from their search results. As soon as they see the drastic decline in new visitors, they'll come crawling back.

  • Oh Please (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thedogcow ( 694111 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:48AM (#10896127)
    You can use the Google Image Search (GIS) on non-porn related searches. Try using GIS under the search engine "cheeseburgers". This has no merit.

    GIS works so well, that quite frankly, any search could potentially lead to an adult image.

    • Re:Oh Please (Score:2, Funny)

      by IvyMike ( 178408 )
      You can use the Google Image Search (GIS) on non-porn related searches

      You know, now that I think about it, I've never tried that!
  • I don't believe Google caches images so there is no copyright issue. Google does index what is allowed to be indexed and placing images on the web in the first place is asking to be indexed, robots.txt or no robots.txt, someone will find your site (if you are lucky in fact) and may link to it.

    Is linking to a site a copyright infringment nowadays? I guess that is up to the court to decide at this point.

    • Re:Cache (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Google caches a small thumbnail image. When you look at a page of GIS results you are not loading the image off the website, you are looking at google's cache of that image. This is 100% legal. [gigalaw.com] It's also just plain good sense, otherwise all the thumbnailed webservers would have to serve up a 300k image every time someone searched for something that linked to it.
      • since they did not(barely) update the index for 7 months i would barely call it cache. A lot of index that are in de images "cache" are no logner available.

        look at my cache that i keep on CD-R. It will degrade in 2 years. (accoridng to real-life test's)

        An other thing they claimed that looking of "perfect 10" (a trade mark of the "porn" company) came up with adwords that lead to other sites. (id does this not if tou search now)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Well, ok, they show thumbnails first and those are stored in Google cache, but to see the original image you still have to go to the original site.

        Well, I guess the judge will also have to decide whether thumbnails are infringing on copyright in this case. Interesting.

  • "Allure of naked women" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WhiteBandit ( 185659 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:49AM (#10896132) Homepage
    From the article:

    Perfect 10 publisher Norm Zada said he is targeting Google because the company is using the allure of naked women to draw more visitors to its site and generate more advertising revenue.

    Riiiiggght. That's been Google's business model all along! Now that you mention it, the two "O's" in Google do kind of look like giant breasts! Who knew I was using a porn search engine all along???

    Please, this is ridiculous. I'd hate to see Google settle with these idiots.

  • "rogue" web sites (Score:5, Interesting)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:51AM (#10896136)
    Google displays the images from rogue Web sites operated in foreign countries, according to Perfect 10's lawsuit

    So they're not suing google for linking to images on their own servers, but for linking to images on someone else's site who they don't have the energy to go after. (Or perhaps just b/c google has deeper pockets). I wonder whether google will bother to fight it; this could probably be settled with some $ and then google could quietly close their images search since they didn't bother much to maintain it anyway. But if google can be sued for linking to material on other servers, it will seriously decrease the functionality of the internet. Not for free porn - I'm pretty sure that is on the net to stay - but for more useful information. The beauty of an automatic search engine is lost if someone has to screen every link for illicit content; eventually nobody will want the hassle of running a free search engine.

    • Google needs to decide if it is worth it to privately settle cases like this, or to fight one through and hope that the courts side with them. I imagine they have plenty of lawyers figuring out what the best option for them at this time is.

      Sometimes it is more economical for a company to simple deal with the cheapshots and pay them off instead of risking the courts coming down on the other side.
    • It'll just mean more people lining up with cap in hand hoping to get some free money from Google. Google, especially now it's a publicly traded company, probably needs to demonstrate it's on firm ground here and take it court.

  • Bah! Who needs this Perfect 10 site... (Score:5, Funny)

    by colonslashslash ( 762464 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:53AM (#10896142) Homepage
    When we have free sites like goatse, lemonparty and tubgirl?

    • You bastard! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @06:13AM (#10896575)

      I've previously had Goatse and Tubgirl inflicted upon my eyes, but when I saw your post, I thought "Lemonparty? What the hell is that?"

      Now I know. But that was your idea all along, wasn't it? Bastard!

  • doubly idiotic (Score:3, Informative)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:53AM (#10896143) Journal
    Never mind the robots.txt.

    Isn't that what this [google.com] is for in the first place?

    If they're not going to use it properly, then it should be stricken from the books ;)

  • They win (aka free publicity) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Horizon_99 ( 58767 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:55AM (#10896150)
    Google looses, they win
    Google wins, they win

  • Sounds more like a ploy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaNasty ( 833075 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:55AM (#10896153) Homepage
    ..to get their name in the news. Wouldn't be surprised if they had the press releases sent out before drawing up any claims.
  • Heres the link:
    http://www.google.com.au/search? %22index+of%22+%22last+modified%22+boobies
  • I have always had an issue with Google providing copyrighted images on its site through this service. They should probably be asking each copyright holder for permission first, like every other site on the net. I realise this is not feasible, and is simply avoided by a robots.txt file, but the onus should be on Google to ask for permission rather then the copyright holder to prevent unauthorised copying. It's any wonder something like this hasn't come up sooner.
    • Indexing images for search purposes would be considered fair use under most countries' copyright laws. Copyright is designed to limit redistribution, and I wouln't call displaying search results redistibution of their images.

      If Google woudn't cache images every search the only option left would be hotlinking the images as part of the search result page, which would be a Bad Thing.
    • How is this any different than caching the text of a website? For that matter, who gives Google the right to crawl my websites? Well, ME of course. The web is a public place. Most websites want traffic, those that don't can use a robots.txt file. It's the de facto standard, and every legitimate web crawler will obey it. Plus, every web designer either knows about it, or can Google it to find out about it.

      In other words, I call PR stunt. A well executed one, I might add.

  • Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:02AM (#10896189)
    It seems that this is a test case the EFF has been waiting for for years: Specifically, should search engines be expected to be the policemen of the internet? The other posts seem to think this is a spidering issue that can be resolved with robots.txt. In truth robots.txt is irrelevant because this guy isn't suing over Google's cache of his own website. He is suing over Google suing other people's websites. In other words he is suing Google because Google, by allowing search, is facilitating people to locate images that might have been stolen from his site.

    Fascinating, no? This is the exact sort of precedent that would argue you could sue Google because you can find P2P apps there, or if you can find an illegal mirror of an Isaac Asimov book Asimov's estate could sue Google while ignoring the mirror. And this case is being put forward by an inherently publicly unsympathetic defendant: a porn site. I will be curious to see where this goes.
    • If the ebook isn't zipped then there's a very good chance that the entire thing will end up cached by google, wither plaintext (if the original was so..) or "view as html" if anything else is the original...
  • He said he fears his company, which claims 100,000 different visitors a month to its website, will be driven out of business unless Google is forced to stop distributing the "free peeks".

    Now, come on. This is Slashdot. What better innuendo setup could you possibly want?

    (Goooooooogle has free V!agra that will make your pen1s longer!!)
  • ...take it's entire site down, and replace it with a nice notice to all the googlers out there WHY the site is down and WHO they have to thank for it (complete with contact info and addresses and phone numbers and fax numbers...)

    if they do that even for a day i think these idiots will get the point that search engines are important to the internet... we need them and the functionality they provide. this is how they work and how they have to work.
    • Don't bother with the 'why this site is missing' page - just drop it entirely from the index. For a large number of web users Google is the way to find sites. Dropping the plaintiff will essentially disappear them from the internet for a sizable proportion of their target market.

      Google should not be getting involved in these kinds of arguments. If people have a problem with being include in the index - drop them and the matter is closed.

  • Law (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Grey_14 ( 570901 )
    Ok, I suppose I need a lawyer to sort this out for me, For something like this, dont you need to prove Guilty Intent? Or is that for other types of law? I'd heard, (And this was in my Grade 11 law class mind you) That to be found guilty, someone had to make the decision to break a law, there are special considerations for either altered states of mind, But a guilty action, by accident, is not nearly held to the same degree of consequences as a guilty action by intent? Anyways, someone setting me clear on

    • Re:Law (Score:2, Informative)

      by hengist ( 71116 )
      IIRC it's called mens rea. Only applies to crimes, not civil suits. Of course, different jurisdictions have different rules...

  • Geez! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by devhen ( 593554 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:11AM (#10896224)
    This is rediculous. This company is suing Google for crawling the web and recording images and information that have been stolen from the website in question by OTHER PEOPLE! They are suing Google because losers in other coutries pay the $25/month and then copy the images to their own site. Google's spider then finds them. Its not Google's fault that this site's customer's are misusing the site's content. Nor is it Google's fault that other people have decided to hand out their own passwords to the site.

    Google is simply crawling the web... any legitimate judge will correct this pr0n company and make them go after the people who are actually cheating them...

    Just another case of "go after the big guy cos he has more money that the little guys that are actually causing the problem". I hope the web site goes out of business and the sleeze bags go to hell...

    • Not only that, but the majority of porn sites out there all do the same thing: They steal porn from each other, usenet, or privately owned free sites.

      Take the bazillion or so "Toon Porn!" websites out there. Maybe 3-4 of them actually feature original works that they've actually commissioned. The remainder leech off of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime or alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.cartoons and recycle the same crap over and over again.

      Pity nobody takes those guys to task for ripping off the original

  • Had to happen sooner or later (Score:4, Insightful)

    by borud ( 127730 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:12AM (#10896229) Homepage
    It is odd how an industry so dependent on search engines would help raise the cost of running a web scale search engine and thus even further contribute to reduce the number of players in that market.

    But of course, it had to happen. Google now has money and is now an obvious target for the litigous sort of bottom feeders who aren't to converned with whom they blame -- as long as it is someone they can bully, extort or push into bankruptcy. Google, of course, has money, so they'll extort them.

    I certainly hope that the courts will decide that Google cannot be blamed for not keeping track of what chunk of data represents someone's property or not, and whether said property is served from the site the owners intend it to. This is silly.

    Then again, so is the judicial system since you can never be sure of the outcome of such a case. Unless, of course, one of the parties is willing to commit more money to the case than the other. You can always buy a victory in the courts, if not formally, then in effect.

  • doesnt have pics though
  • The real reason for this is for the porn site in question to get some publicity. Think about it for a second and it makes perfect sense. There are a bazillion-quillion porn sites around. This one just got a HUGE amount of press from their little lawsuit. It wasn't free, but for sure they are making a profit off the moneys they payed a lawyer to write up their lil lawsuit.
  • The complaint also alleges that Google Search is providing 'links to password hacking sites that provide ways to gain illegal access to [the complainant's] website.'

    It's mind-numbingly easy to catch pirated passwords... All you need is to log the IPs of people logging in. Any password used from more than say 5 completely different IPs (not part of the same subnet) within an hour is pirated. How hard can that be to program?

    Too hard I guess... ;)

  • Perfect 10's business model (Score:5, Informative)

    by 1u3hr ( 530656 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @05:00AM (#10896382)
    Like some former Unix vendors, Perfect 10 seems to have moved into the litigation business.

    Credit companies sued over porn IP [law.com]: "A Beverly Hills pornographer is ... filing a copyright and trademark suit against Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc. The porn company says that without the support of these financial institutions, infringers wouldn't be able to steal their stuff."

    Which failed [yahoo.com]: "U.S. District Judge James Ware tossed out a copyright and trademark infringement suit brought against Visa International Service Association and MasterCard International Inc. by Perfect 10 Inc....`A lot of copyright [litigation] is being pushed by pornographers who are trying to take advantage of cases brought by more mainstream media,' Bridges [representing MasterCard] said."

  • Article with more information (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jesser ( 77961 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @05:38AM (#10896483) Homepage Journal

    This xbiz article [xbiz.com] (ads on that page are NSFW) has more information about the lawsuit:

    In a letter to Google in June, Perfect 10 attorneys wrote that Internet users can find certain infringed-upon images by "doing advanced Google searches using the model name on the second line and 'nude' on the first line. So, for example, the first URL below was found by doing an advanced Google search using 'nude' and 'Monika Zsibrit.'"

    The suit alleges Google committed 12 counts of intellectual property violations against Perfect 10 magazine and the website, including trademark dilution, wrongful use of a registered trademark and unfair competition.

    I wonder why Perfect 10 didn't just use the DMCA to make Google remove/hide the links to the infringing pages. Google has complied with such DMCA requests in the past and has even published a DMCA Policy [google.com]. It is interesting that the suit mentions trademark dilution, wrongful use of a registered trademark, and unfair competition rather than (or maybe in addition to) copyright/DMCA violation.

  • Urm surely its up to the porn websites to include the right meta-tags that prevent search engines from spidering pages that they wish not to be spidered.

    This page has a good explanation of how you can use the robots meta-tag to prevent search engines from indexing pages.

    http://web-support.csx.cam.ac.uk/webliaison/robot s .html

    Im assuming google are adhering to this policy and if so then its up to the porn site to put the relevent measures in place to prevent image poaching.

    Nick ...

  • Can you really ignore Google? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xiando ( 770382 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:30AM (#10896791) Homepage Journal
    Google does use and respect the robots.txt tag and it is no problem to ask it not to index folders on your personal site. If someone is illegally using your content then it is the persons providing it who are the problem, not the spider that mirrors the site. Spiders may carry illegal and copyrighted content, yes, but since spiders tend to drop the cached eventually if the original site goes down, the problem is still best solved by removing the site with the bad content.

    I personally use a smooth .htaccess to prevent anyone and thing from using my images without having the right url as referrer. This is easy to do and perfect for preventing other sites of linking directly to given file types like swf, jpg and png.

    How you and your content appear in search engines is entirely up to you.

    Some porn providers actually encourage you to to use their content under some license terms, this is how I got the content for the instant wank galleries at hardcoretorrents.com [hardcoretorrents.com]. Perhaps the porn provider just needs to provide the content they feel other people are violating under better terms?

    Why anyone would be foolish enough to ask to be removed from Google is something I do not understand. The hits generated from them, at least according to my logs, is extremely valuable and important. More visitors, more income is true in most cases. And my logs clearly indicate that if I was to be removed from Google, then the number of daily visitors at my torrent site bt.g.la [g.la] and other sites would go down. It's that simple.

  • where do you draw the line? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JaJ_D ( 652372 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:27AM (#10896965)
    Serious question time but in the culture of "litigate like mad", where do we stop?

    This porn company is sueing bacause of copyright infringement, what next do we sue Google for next; because if you search for something you wrote, and someone else has stolen it without using your copyright (e.g. some software I wrote), or the GPL is being violated, etc... Then we *must* sue google for this crime. Do we have to appoint someone to check *every* google link?

    If it is found that google is guity, then they have aided and abetied a crime.

    Consider *any* terrorist who uses google to search for the group to join, who then go on to commit a 9/11 type attack. Do we sue google for aiding and abeting mass murder? Are the directors *personally* liable? Are the staff? Are the shareholders? Does the US put on trial, and if found guily, execute a few hundred/thousand/million people for their "part" in this crime? Or what happens if another school mass killing is found to have occured and the people who carried out the act used Goggle to find out information, or to find an ammo supplier etc..

    Where do we draw the line with stupid litigation? When will people stand up and take responsability for *their* acts, *their* incompentances, *their* failings, rather than blaming others. Or when will the correct people be blamed for *their* acts rather than trying to off-load the blame onto others??

    and breathe

    Jaj - wondering when sense will prevail in the US courts.

  • Easy. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Heem ( 448667 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:10AM (#10897153) Homepage Journal
    Google and others should adopt a policy such as:

    IF you threaten to sue us due to any content that we link to, simply send us the domain names in question and we will completely forever remove any links to your sites.

  • No need ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dsb3 ( 129585 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:23AM (#10897653) Homepage Journal
    (Note: free registration may be required to view the article).

    No need ... I'll just read it from the google cache.

  • Secure the Images (Score:3, Informative)

    by panda ( 10044 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:40AM (#10897813) Homepage Journal
    The pornographer has a few other options beyond not distributing his .htaccess file and having a robots.txt to keep googlebot away.

    One that jumps readily to mind is to check the refering URL when a request for an image is made and to only send the graphic if the referrer is on an "approved" list of sites. Otherwise, return a 401, 403 or 404 error for the graphic.

    If he's using Apache on his site, there's an example in the Apache documentation on how to set that up.

    That won't stop "pirates" who have access to the site via a passworded account or a valid affiliate site, but it should cut down on automated bot-raping of his graphics.

  • Weak argument (Score:4, Interesting)

    by saddino ( 183491 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:13AM (#10898194)
    Perfect 10 publisher Norm Zada said he is targeting Google because the company is using the allure of naked women to draw more visitors to its site and generate more advertising revenue.

    Google's image search doesn't display advertisments.

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