Perfect 10 vs. Google
Information Today, Vol. 23, No. 9, p. 17, October 2006
3 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2010
Date Written: October 1, 2006
Abstract
A Federal appeals court will shortly consider a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Perfect 10, a publisher of adult content magazines and websites, against Google. The suit claims that Google’s use of thumbnail versions of Perfect 10's images infringes on their copyrights.
Many observers considered this issue to have been resolved. In 2003, a federal court held that a search engine’s use of thumbnail images was fair use. In a case involving the images that an artist had posted on his Website, the court said that thumbnail images were for a different purpose and character, and did not impact on the market for the artist’s work.
The thumbnail holding is important to Google’s argument that the Book Search program is also fair. By publishing only “snippets”, or short pieces of information from copyright works, like with thumbnails Google is using the work for a different purpose which will not impact on the market for the original. (They even provide links to booksellers who can sell the work.)
In the current lawsuit, Perfect 10 raises several challenges that were not fully explored in the earlier case. Two of these were accepted by the lower court and are particularly important to the information industry.
Keywords: copyright law, lawsuits, images, thumbnail images, Perfect 10, Google, snippets, Google’s Book Search, market effect, fair use, infringement, public benefit
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