Google sued over nude pics

2005-08-25 15:25

Los Angeles - The publisher of a US men's magazine has sued Google, alleging that the internet search giant is infringing on copyright by displaying thousands of pictures of nude women.

Perfect 10 magazine said in a statement on Wednesday that it was seeking a preliminary injunction against the search engine "to enjoin Google from copying, displaying and distributing Perfect 10 copyrighted images".

The magazine said it had already filed a complaint against Google in November 2004 claiming the web giant "is displaying hundreds of thousands of adult images, from the most tame to the most exceedingly explicit, to draw massive traffic to its website, which it is converting into hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising revenue".

Much of Google's revenues come from so-called keyword searches that link advertisers to users by their search criteria.

Perfect 10 claims that "under the guise of being a 'search engine,' Google is displaying, free of charge, thousands of copies of the best images from Perfect 10, Playboy, nude scenes from major movies, nude images of supermodels, as well as extremely explicit images of all kinds."

Norm Zada, the founder of Perfect 10 magazine, claimed that most of the traffic to search engines is sex-related, and added: "Google's extraordinary gain in market cap from nothing a few years ago to close to $80bn is more due to their massive misappropriation of intellectual property than anything else."

Zada said the outcome of the Perfect 10 suit has implications for other media, which he said lose revenues to Google through these practices.

"If all an infringer needs to avoid liability is to provide some sort of a 'search function,' that will be the end of intellectual property in this country," Zada said.

AFP has also sued Google for copyright infringement, claiming the search engine was displaying its news and photos without permission.

- AFP