Litigious porn publisher lashes out at Google

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 26 Aug 2005 at 15:39

Porn publisher Perfect 10 is seeking an injunction against Google to stop it showing thumbnails of its copyright images in search results.

The company filed the request in an LA District Court on Wednesday, as part of an ongoing copyright infringement case first brought last November. Perfect 10 alleges the practice involves copying, displaying and distributing thousands of its images, with many of the results linking to third party sites that are also using the images without copyright permission.

Furthermore, by displaying related advertising alongside such results, Google is also making money, claims Perfect 10.

The suit runs along similar lines to that which it filed against Amazon in June. Founder Norm Zada told Information Week that he is also aware that search engines MSN and Yahoo are engaged in similar practice but acknowledged that the financial resources were not available to pursue everyone.