http://www.forbes.com/business/free_.../0606/054.html
Sex Sells
Seth Lubove, 06.06.05
Is Google profiting from porn? Or is it a victim of a digital shakedown?
Publisher and eccentric money manager Norman Zadeh claims he's lost $35 million on the quarterly magazine Perfect 10 since launching it in 1997 to publish nude photos of naturally endowed women and run self-penned screeds about world affairs. A big chunk of that money is going to pay the lawyers.
Zadeh is the plaintiff in five lawsuits alleging unauthorized reproduction of the magazine's photos on the Internet. In his latest, filed in Los Angeles federal court, Zadeh accuses Google of ripping him off by storing and posting his photos on the big search engine's image search index and by linking to Web sites that are also stealing his photos.
As in his previous lawsuits (FORBES, Sept. 17, 2001), Zadeh's case is less notable for its merits than for his attempt at laying bare the unintended consequences of search engines. Type in any kinky fetish and it will likely splash image search results on Google, Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo and Amazon.com's new A9. Google's SafeSearch and other filters intended to cull the smut can be easily turned off by the user.
"What exactly is Google doing?" asks Zadeh from his Los Angeles mansion above Beverly Hills, where he says he's down to managing just $9 million. "Are they really a Good Samaritan search engine?Or are they a one-stop porn shop out to win the search engine battle?"
Zadeh's demands are based in part on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which governs the rights of copyright holders on the Internet and how to protest infringements. Courts have ruled in previous lawsuits that search engines are permitted to display thumbnail images provided they link to the copyright holder's Web site (whether they can link to full-size images is still a matter of debate). But if you click on a nude thumbnail image of a Perfect 10 model on Google, it will most likely take you to a Web site, usually a porn site, that has stolen Zadeh's image. Google's robotic spiders don't crawl inside Zadeh's pay site, where he safeguards the images.
When that happens, Zadeh contends, Google benefits with "millions of dollars" in increased advertising revenue. That's because these pirate sites may also post Google advertiser links--and each click at those sites earns Google revenues, which it shares with the pirate.
Zadeh is especially incensed that even Google's free thumbnail images are now potentially eating into his sales. The postage-stamp-size photos are the same size as those he's peddling to cell phone subscribers in England, where he collects $7,000 a month. But Google's diminutive images can now be seen for free on cell phone browsers.
In its answer to Zadeh's lawsuit, Google says it is only acting as a transmitter of data and that it is not intentionally linking to stolen material. It disputes the claim that it is enabling Internet porn pirates to thrive by linking to their sites. (The company won't disclose how many searches are for porn.) If anything, Google asserts in its counterclaims, it is doing guys like Zadeh a favor by "making the public more aware" of his "original works."
Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues Zadeh and his ilk cause Web sites and search engines to reflexively pull data rather than face the wrath of a lawsuit. "Kudos to Google for standing up to the suit and not being chilled," says Seltzer.
