Going up against a massive Internet empire like Google sounds like fun in theory. But in these United States, it rarely ends well for the underdog. And in the case of the small porn company vs. Goliath, the same is true.
A softcore porn site called Perfect 10 filed a lawsuit claiming Google is violating copyright in its use of images on the Perfect 10 website. Perfect 10 says Google is giving away for free what they usually make good money on. The company claims the thumbnails Google finds with its web crawling software and posts on the web for free has cost it at least $50 million from 1996 to 2007, forcing Perfect 10 near to bankruptcy.
Perfect 10's complaint didn't fly with the 9th Circuit Court, though.
“While being forced into bankruptcy qualifies as a form of irreparable harm, Perfect 10 has not established that the requested injunction would forestall that fate," Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote for the court. "Perfect 10 has not shown a sufficient causal connection between irreparable harm to Perfect 10's business and Google's operation of its search engine.”
However, in Perfect 10's separate case against Megaupload, a file-sharing service, Chief Judge Irma Gonzalez of the Southern District of California refused to throw copyright infringement allegations out.
“Megaupload serves as more than a passive conduit and more than a mere ‘file storage’ company,” Gonzalez wrote in her decision. “It has created distinct Web sites presumably in an effort to streamline users access to different types of media. It encourages and in some cases pays its users to upload vast amounts of popular media through its rewards programs. It disseminates URLs for various files throughout the Internet. It provides payouts to affiliate websites who maintain a catalogue of all available files and last at a minimum, it is plausibly aware of the ongoing rampant infringement taking place on its Web sites.”
A softcore porn site called Perfect 10 filed a lawsuit claiming Google is violating copyright in its use of images on the Perfect 10 website. Perfect 10 says Google is giving away for free what they usually make good money on. The company claims the thumbnails Google finds with its web crawling software and posts on the web for free has cost it at least $50 million from 1996 to 2007, forcing Perfect 10 near to bankruptcy.
Perfect 10's complaint didn't fly with the 9th Circuit Court, though.
“While being forced into bankruptcy qualifies as a form of irreparable harm, Perfect 10 has not established that the requested injunction would forestall that fate," Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote for the court. "Perfect 10 has not shown a sufficient causal connection between irreparable harm to Perfect 10's business and Google's operation of its search engine.”
However, in Perfect 10's separate case against Megaupload, a file-sharing service, Chief Judge Irma Gonzalez of the Southern District of California refused to throw copyright infringement allegations out.
“Megaupload serves as more than a passive conduit and more than a mere ‘file storage’ company,” Gonzalez wrote in her decision. “It has created distinct Web sites presumably in an effort to streamline users access to different types of media. It encourages and in some cases pays its users to upload vast amounts of popular media through its rewards programs. It disseminates URLs for various files throughout the Internet. It provides payouts to affiliate websites who maintain a catalogue of all available files and last at a minimum, it is plausibly aware of the ongoing rampant infringement taking place on its Web sites.”
I guess that falls under the heading of "Win some, Lose some." However, anytime that you take on a company with that much money, and that many lawyers, you can almost bet that you will lose.