WebProNews

Tag: Perfect 10

  • Perfect 10 Sues Tumblr

    A porn company called Perfect 10 recently sued microblogging platform Tumblr for copyright infringement almost five years to the day of the social network’s inception. Tumblr, host to over 46 million blogs, is also home to a spectacular amount of pornography, and Perfect 10 claims the site facilitated the “rampant and unremedied uploading, display and distribution of Perfect 10’s copyrighted photographs.”

    Perfect 10 also asserts tat Tumblr never followed through with six requests from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove its content from their servers, and that “Tumblr employees have posted infringing content to Tumblr servers, to help start the business, including content which infringes upon Perfect 10’s Copyrighted Works.” Safe harbor laws aren’t meant to protect content that is knowingly distributed but proprietors of a hosting site, and Perfect 10 is somewhat known for legally pursuing these sorts of instances of infringement.

    Perfect 10 first went after Google in 2004, over the search giant’s use of thumbnails owned by the porn server, prompting an examination of what sort of content falls under fair use. Google lost that case, which was eventually overturned in 2007, though Perfect 10 is back at it again, in a situation some think was bound to happen with Tumblr. Sites that host user-generated content tend to hide behind putting the blame for any sort of seedy or illegal activity on said users. Though, the case with Tumblr is a bit different – besides the fact that the case deals with headline-making pornography, something Rick Santorum wishes would just go away, Perfect 10 alleges that actual Tumblr employees had a hand in jacking their content for illegal sharing.

    As of late, Google and Facebook obliged to plainly remove user content from their social networks in India that was considered to be incendiary, and a judge in Germany has ruled that YouTube is responsible for copyrighted music that was uploaded by its users. It will be interesting to see how the case with Tumblr pans out. Perhaps new regulations will be established not only regarding fair use, but also with all the porn on the site.

  • Perfect 10 Fails Where Google Succeeds

    Perfect 10 Fails Where Google Succeeds

    Perfect10.com, a site that features incredibly attractive female models in various positions of nude repose has been long after Google because of the site’s content appearing in Google Image Searches. Their struggle has been going on for sometime now.

    In fact, WebProNews has articles dating back to 2005 discussing this very subject. However, according to the latest appeal loss, the saga may finally be coming to an end. According to a post over at CNet, the latest attempt by Perfect 10, one that seeks to punish Google for being a search engine that works as its supposed to, has been denied.

    Here’s the gist:

    The Ninth Circuit ruled that Perfect 10, a porn studio with a long history of filing copyright suits against Internet companies, rejected a request for a preliminary injunction against Google. The court said that Perfect 10 didn’t present enough evidence to prove that it would suffer irreparable harm from the photos.

    You see, Perfect 10’s content is primarily hidden behind a pay wall, meaning, in order to see their index of naked women, you have to pay for it. Unfortunately for the Perfect 10 web developer, who apparently didn’t understand how to manipulate a robots.txt file, apparently, Perfect 10 images began appearing in Google’s image search results.

    Regardless of the fact that there are an unending amount of tutorials and instructional sites that inform developers how to keep their paid content from appearing in free image searches, for some reason, Perfect 10 felt it was Google’s fault their paid content was going out to the world for free.

    In fact, Perfect 10’s claim was Google’s image search cost them something in the area of $50 million. Disregarding the fact that, again, the blame should’ve been placed directly on the head of the Perfect 10 web developer, the company tried, and tried, and tried again to make Google (and others) pay for their design inadequacies.

    Each time, these attempts did little but clog up a court system that’s already bursting at the seams.

    There was, apparently, a slight moment of victory when another judge upheld a Perfect 10 filing against Megaupload, a file-sharing site that allows others to swap files via email or direct download. Granted, Megaupload doesn’t have the money Google does, but even the smaller victories count, right?

    It should also be noted that when a “Perfect 10” search is conducted in Google Images, the amount of content originating from the site in question is negligible, even if SafeSearch is turned off. This mean that, even though the Perfect 10 web developers finally figured out how to protect their paid content, the company still wants to nail Google to the cross.

    A semi-recent post on the Perfect 10 blog reveals as much. The title, “Google Is Destroying The Entertainment Industry” reeks of a “give me back my money” approach, courtesy of Mel Gibson and South Park:


    If at first you don’t succeed in making others pay your way, try, try again.