Tasteful porn site Perfect 10, already in lawsuits with
Google, Amazon, and others, announced that it has filed an additional complaint
of copyright infringement against Microsoft over search results returned from
MSN’s image search feature. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
According to
a press
release posted today, Perfect 10 alleges that MSN illegally displays
thumbnails and links to images that should only be available to Perfect 10’s paid
subscribers; the results usually go to third party sites reposting Perfect 10’s -- as
well as countless others' -- images without permission.
“Microsoft is showing tens of thousands of extremely
valuable celebrity images, along with Perfect 10 images, without authorization,
which it obtains from hundreds if not thousands of pirate websites,” says Perfect
10 president Norm Zada. “I’m shocked by Microsoft’s
attitude in this matter. You would think that as a major copyright holder
itself, Microsoft would be extremely sympathetic to concerns of other copyright
holders … ironically, Microsoft has chastised Google for copying other people’s work without permission, but now Microsoft is doing just
that.”
In addition to linking full-size versions of infringed
images, MSN search also makes passwords available to the subscriber section of Perfect
10’s site, claims Zada, allowing surfers full access to the site’s paid
offerings for free: “Microsoft has complained about entities that
distribute unauthorized Microsoft software product codes on the one hand, while
Microsoft makes our confidential passwords available to millions of online
users. There is something very wrong about this.”
Zada claims he has an easy solution, but search engines
refuse to implement it: “Search engines could greatly reduce infringement if
they would simply delist obvious infringers upon receiving notice, and stop
copying and linking to copyrighted works without permission,” but adds that
doing so would “adversely affect their revenue.”
Perfect 10 is already
involved in 28 lawsuits against other plaintiffs, according to Ars Technica. A nearly identical lawsuit
filed against Google has seen courts side
against the embattled porn site: in May the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
overturned a previous decision favorable to Perfect 10, rejecting almost all claims,
including one that Google’s display of thumbnails cut into Perfect 10’s market
for cell-phone-sized images.
