A well known Fair Use case over image search has a new development. The adult site Perfect 10 sued Google and Amazon A9 over thumbnail images of their content appearing being a violation of their copyright. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it was fair use which Google and others are interpreting as a victory.

Unfortunately for Google the court didn’t stop there, they did what many court decisions seem to do and left the door open.

Still, the panel said the lower court should not have rejected Perfect 10’s claim that search engines can be held liable when they act as the middleman between a Web searcher and a website that contains illegal copies.

“There is no dispute that Google substantially assists websites to distribute their infringing copies to a worldwide market and assists a worldwide audience of users to access infringing materials,” the court said.

So the court felt that Google (and other search engines with similar functionality) are an accessory to the infringement but the use of the thumbnail wasn’t enough to sway the case Perfect 10’s way.

This could be foreshadowing how the courts will treat YouTube content. There are no third party websites in the YouTube court situation that Google can point to as being the ones responsible. As a shareholder, I really, really wish Google would have stayed away from YouTube. They bought a breeding ground for copyright infringement and I’m sticking my belief that the courts will rule against them as to that being infringement.

The Perfect 10 thumbnail case was weak, but the decision showed how the court feels about Google’s culpability in copyright infringement. While Google should be happy with the court’s decision the quote from them above should have a very chilling effect in their counsel chambers. Google needs to get some sort of technology or significant moderation presence in place at YouTube that keeps copyrighted material out of there. If they are unable to do that, then they need to cut deals with the copyright holders ASAP. I know they’re trying to cut deals, but if this ends up in court first, I think it will end badly for Google.

I don’t have a crystal ball but don’t need one to see this is like a small tremor before the big shaker.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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