Google’s Image Search Under Attack Sunday 2006-02-26
It’s stormy weather at the top, and the “good guy” Google has reached high enough. Jason Lee Miller of webpronews brings to our attention that …
“Google suffered a setback in court last Friday as US District Judge Howard Matz ruled that thumbnail displays retrieved by the company’s image search feature were a likely violation of copyright law. Links to third party sites and the practice of “framing” the image above those sites, however, were not considered to be in violation.”
This is the result so far of a law suit against Google, brought by Skinmag Perfect Inc, claiming that thumbnails from their images presented by Google image search, be an infringement on their copyright.
I’m not a jurist, but the whole matter seems ridiculous from my common sense view. The company has published its images on the web in such a manner, that they can be viewed by anyone. If some of the pictures are intended to be viewed only after payment, it is the responsibility of the company to hide them from harvesting and indexing by search engines. As any well behaved search robot, the Google bot respects a robots.txt file. There could be no copyright violation by just presenting what’s already in the public eye, and the publication is to no disadvantage to the company
On the contrary, if someone finds one of their images by an image search, it will boast their traffic, as Google presents the thumbnail in a frame above the original page containing the image. If the image itself is of interest, it is likely that you go to their site for more of the same.
It is significant, that the company bringing the suit, has a semi pornographic site, and most probably they have made this move to get out in the lime light. I have the feeling ( again, I’m no jurist ), that many law suits on big companies and rich individuals in the US, are aimed at fame or fortune, and built on fragile ground, but that’s just me.
I don’t care to give you a link to the site, as you will easily fin it by a Google search 
- Posted in : The Internet
- Author : Petit
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