Google was recently found (in a district court) to have
violated the Copyright rights of Perfect 10, a company that produces nude images of women. The violation of the copyright was found in the linking images of google. Let me demonstrate below:
You see the big arrow in the picture? It's pointing to the offending image in question. Well, not exactly. That's a Transformers image, and the images of Perfect 10 are naked women. But you get the general idea. (to get the transformers image, for edification, I typed in "cool" to the Google image search engine)
It was already determined in
Kelly v. Ariba Soft that thumb nail images of this sort are sufficiently transformative, so as to constitute fair use. (and not be infringing)
With decisions like this recent one decided today, I fear for the
already tenuous "fair use" law. This is a 9th circuit district court that is not following a 9th circuit opinion. Will Google's picture search technology be long for this world?
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