Warning, links in this story lead to adult content

As I reported earlier, a Judge a has ruled Google infringed on Perfect 10’s copyright through Google Images. Here is DMCA notice Perfect 10 sent Google listing sites to remove from Google Images along with the search terms.

Although the news stories made it appear that these websites were directly stealing Perfect 10’s copyrighted images, after reviewing the DMCA notice and reading complaints on several webmaster forums I have learned otherwise. In fact, many of these websites were using content given by Photographer’s website affiliate programs to program their program. Apparently, these photographers have shot content for Perfect 10 at some point in the past.

I do not see how Perfect 10 could have spent perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars sueing Google and not have known these photographers had their own premium internet sites.

In fact, it gets worse. A specific site owner claims that they were approached by Perfect 10 who requested specific models and specific images.

Based on what I have read from site owners, I am of the opinion that the following happened:

In my opinion, Perfect 10 purchased the rights to specific images that were ranking on Google, with the intention to sue Google, and possibly even the affiliates who were using these images; affiliates who had no reason at all to believe they were infringing on anyone’s copyright.

A individual representing another affiliate program stated that Perfect 10, in December, approached them to purchase specific images. Not only did Perfect10’s DMCA request include that program’s affiliates, but also the website of the affiliate program itself! Here is the direct quote made on a public adult webmaster board (warning, adult content on link)

Perfect10 makes the big mistake of including 105 of our affiliates in their DMCA notification to Google: http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=898. They even listed our own affiliate program domain as a copyright infringer : http://www.newnudecash.com/ . Google’s reaction was to randomly block some of the sites listed, and therefor some of you have lost your sites main page listing at Google.

If what is stated is true, and these images were simply “licensed” to Prefect 10, rather than the copyright being sold, they are not even in legal a position to issue a DMCA request!

I did not create this blog to cover the adult industry, However, I believe this story is extremely important for two reasons. First, mainstream or adult, how can affiliates know what an affiliate program owner is doing won’t cause them legal problems or hurt their business? (while the affiliates themselves were not sued, many did lose lots of money due to loss of search engine traffic, my understanding is that for a time entire domains were banned.) Second, this appears to be a case of a company specificly laying a trap in order to sue Google, in a case which could have dramatic implications to fair use on the internet.