Canadian Court Lets Perfect 10 Case Against Google Move Forward

from the oh-come-on dept

Wed, Jul 21st 2010 7:04pm — Mike Masnick

Over the years, we've written many, many, many times about Perfect 10, the former publisher of a porn magazine who has spent the last decade making ridiculously laughable arguments about how every search engine on the planet is infringing on its copyrights for pointing people to images that people had scanned from Perfect 10's magazines and put online. For the most part, these lawsuits have gone nowhere, but Perfect 10 is incredibly persistent. Last month, we wrote about a countersuit by Rapidshare, which detailed how Perfect 10 is now a "copyright troll," that (according to Rapidshare's claims) purposely tries to spread its works online in order to have more companies to sue. Obviously, a key target of Perfect 10 has been Google, though Perfect 10 keeps losing (and then continues to come up with ridiculous reasons to keep the lawsuit alive).

Apparently, Perfect 10 has decided that if the US courts won't work for this game, it might as well try elsewhere. An anonymous reader points us to the news that Perfect 10 is happily suing Google in Canada as well as the US. Google had, quite reasonably, sought to have the case dumped, noting the identical case going on in the US. However, the judge noted that, due to differences in copyright law between the US and Canada, the two lawsuits are not the same. Still, hopefully, a court will see through the ruse.

The press release from Perfect 10 also tries to distinguish its lawsuits from the recent Viacom ruling saying that Google is protected by the DMCA. And while there are differences in the case, Perfect 10's claims here are laughable:

"This case is inherently different from the Viacom v. Google case, where the Judge apparently felt that Google expeditiously processed Viacom's notices. Our experience with Google is that Google processes almost no notices from small companies," Zada adds. "I have sent more than 500 notices of infringement to Google," Zada said. "I basically do a Google Image search, cross off the images Perfect 10 does not own, and send an Adobe copy of that Google web page to Google, with the infringing images clearly marked. Google can clearly see which images are infringing and where they are located. Yet Google has refused to process those notices," Zada says.

That's both silly and misleading. We've seen Google pull down content on legitimately filed DMCA notices in a timely manner from companies big and small all the time. In fact, some of us feel that Google is often too quick to pull down content on DMCA notices. The problem, as was pointed out in the Rapidshare lawsuit, is that Perfect 10 refuses to follow the procedure put forth by the DMCA. There's a clear procedure for how to file a DMCA notice. But what's clear from the quote above is that Perfect 10 isn't filing a legitimate takedown. It's just sending screenshots with no additional information. And what's an "Adobe copy"?

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Filed Under: canada, copyright, dmca, secondary liability
Companies: google, perfect 10

18 Comments

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MrWilson, 21 Jul 2010 @ 7:36pm

Differences
"However, the judge noted that, due to differences in copyright law between the US and Canada, the two lawsuits are not the same."

Don't worry, between Bill C-32 and ACTA, the differences should be smoothed over soon enough.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2010 @ 7:47pm

I think you are missing a big point, Google is a search engine and not hosting the file. They suing bing and yahoo and altavista also?
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MrWilson, 21 Jul 2010 @ 7:52pm

Re:
I recall Perfect 10 initially argued that Google Image Search's thumbnails were infringing copies.

From the Wikipedia entry: "The plaintiff requested a preliminary injunction for Google to stop creating and distributing thumbnails of its images in its Google Image Search service, and for it to stop indexing and linking to sites hosting such images."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Google_Inc.
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Karl (profile), 21 Jul 2010 @ 8:25pm

Adobe copy
And what's an "Adobe copy"?

They tape it to a brick, and throw it through Google's window.
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abc gum, 21 Jul 2010 @ 8:36pm

Re: Re:
"The plaintiff requested a preliminary injunction for Google to stop creating and distributing thumbnails of its images in its Google Image Search service, and for it to stop indexing and linking to sites hosting such images."

- One would think that choice was within the descretion of the plantiff. Robots.txt is not that difficult to understand. I do not think they have a case.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2010 @ 9:02pm

Re: Re: Re:
No, they were actually complaining that Google was indexing thumbnails of images hosted by 3rd-parties, not their own hosted images.

Not that it makes the case any better. If anything, it makes it sillier.
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MrWilson, 21 Jul 2010 @ 9:20pm

Re: Adobe copy
I'm guessing he means that he takes a screenshot of the Google Image Search page, opens it in Photoshop, and draws X's on the images that Perfect 10 doesn't "own"...er, that Perfect 10 doesn't currently have a copyright on.

Apparently he doesn't realize that Microsoft Paint can do the same thing. He doesn't need $200 software to do that.
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Pieter Hulshoff (profile), 21 Jul 2010 @ 9:57pm

DMCA notice?
Why would Google be liable under Canadian copyright law for not reacting fast enough on DMCA notices from small companies? As far as I know, Canada does not have a notice and takedown system (yet?).
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2010 @ 12:13am

I think they use images just to annoy others because to extract data from images is error prone(OCR is not perfect) and time consuming.

Why those people can just send the links?
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2010 @ 1:21am

Can you handle the truth?
Mike, there is so much you have to learn about this world.

Pay attention. Suppose you are running a company such as Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, Google or Rapidshare and your worried about the legal implications of certain activities of yours.

Well, then you can wait until someone sues you but you can also sue yourself which excludes the possibility that someone may actually sue you AND use sensible legal arguments right?

So you go and look for a company that is willing to sue you using lame arguments and have it take you to court. You will win and you can declare the case "a landmark ruling" and a lot of potential enemies will now leave you alone?

Easy peasy lemon squeezy

Talk to the experts about this:

Andrew P. Bridges, Partner
http://www.winston.com/index.cfm?contentID=24&itemID=13402

Mr. Bridges ranks nationally among the foremost IP litigators, with important victories in trial and appellate courts as lead counsel in notable intellectual property cases, including:

- the defense of MasterCard in Perfect 10 v. Visa and MasterCard, a landmark decision on secondary liability of credit card companies under copyright and trademark law, in both the trial appellate courts (arguing for all defendants)
- the defense of Google in Perfect 10 v. Google and Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, a landmark decision on fair use, the display and distribution rights under copyright law, and secondary liability under copyright law as applied to search engines

http://www.winston.com/index.cfm?contentID=24&itemID=13402

Of course Mr Bridges would never set up schemes like this, but maybe people he knows would? Or he has heard about it?

Should also put this in another perspective:

RapidShare is not liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by its users, a German court ruled yesterday. The Dusseldorf Court of Appeals overturned the earlier decision of a local district court in a case brought by the movie outfit Capelight Pictures. (Torrentfreak)

WHO? Capelight Pictures.....

Dusseldorf being the place where no sane company would bring a case because Germany's one and only anti-copyright judge is working there.
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bob, 22 Jul 2010 @ 1:23am

Sooo
Google loses and 10 gets what, $500 (CN)?
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NAMELESS.ONE, 22 Jul 2010 @ 5:15am

fucktards dont realize we dont have a dmca law AND
so what the hell is the issue
and you have case law that states from the supreme court no less that its the users choice to visit infringing links

this being the seocnd case once it goes ot the supreme court again and if google wins this it will nail shut this waste of Canadian tax payer money

See p2pnet.net ruling about linking to infringing material
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Michael, 22 Jul 2010 @ 6:20am

Re: Re: Adobe copy
He's probably using a pirated copy of Photoshop that he got for free.
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BBT, 22 Jul 2010 @ 7:29am

Adobe Copy
My guess is it's your typical computer-illiterate procedure that takes some unholy number of steps to do a task in the most roundabout way. Probably something involving a lo-res screenshot, MS Paint, MS Word, and ending with an export to PDF. Maybe he worked in a scanner and a wooden table, like this classic tale: Web 0.1 at thedailywtf.com
Really, though, you should know better than to ask. (xkcd)
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2010 @ 10:58am

German court overturns injunction against RapidShare
@ 10

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/german-court-overturns-injunction-against-rapi dshare.ars
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ahh no, 22 Jul 2010 @ 12:39pm

Google Takedowns
We've submitted many take down notices to Google and it usually takes about 30-45 days. I don't call that timely.

Meanwhile spammers use images and Adsense to profit off them
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Rick, 22 Jul 2010 @ 2:17pm

Re: Google Takedowns
You're doing it wrong then. I've never had to wait more than a few days for action on a DMCA takedown at Google or YouTube. I have to file them almost weekly sometimes.

It's also a heck of a lot easier than a lawsuit.
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bob, 24 Jul 2010 @ 10:03am

Re: Re: Re:
It amazes me how many of you morons comment on this you know nothing about. I am a copyright holder as well.... And people steal my stuff post it somewhere else with goodle ads all around it, and everyone is making money off my stuff. Of and by the way moron, you do not need robot.txt when you have a password protected site. Learn facts before you post.
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