“Norman Zadeh, publisher of nudie mag Perfect 10, ‘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… ‘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?’ … 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.” —Forbes (US)

Evidently this guy is the sort of entrepreneur who would rather sue a successful business than create one. He publishes some lame tit magazine that’s failing financially. He appears to recognize that information technology has irreversibly changed the way pornography is created and consumed, but rather than adapt a new business model that works with these changes he puts out lawsuit after lawsuit trying to stem the tide. Google’s image search, he claims, is stealing his porn — which isn’t true. Thousands of other would-be webmasters are stealing his porn. Google is simply providing an invaluable service by indexing the web, and because the web happens to include porn-stealers then Google indexes them too.

Take an objective look at the claim made by Mr. Zadeh. First he claims that, if you do a Google image search, you’ll see thumbnails that violate his copyright — and while it may be true that the site hosting the thumbnail has stolen the image, Google is merely presenting a search result that is in complete accord with the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Second, Mr. Zadeh claims that, if you click on the link, it takes you to a site that may host Google ads — and because Google earns a kickback from its ads, Google is in effect rewarding pornographers for stealing images. This, too, is patently false, for the simple reason that Google’s Terms of Service forbid its ads from appearing on pornographic sites. And not only are these Terms of Service enforced by moderators, a sort of Google vice squad, they also seem to be incorporated into its search algorithms as well — which is why, PervScan suspects, Google ads do not work on this site, even though it’s not pornographic per se. Google’s ad technology must filter for words like bestiality and necrophilia.

In short, Mr. Zadeh claims that he’s trying to expose the seedy side of internet search technology. But it’s hard not to suspect that he’s really just exposing his own seedy motivation — which is that it’s always easier to sue a big corporation with a fixed address than it is to track down the thousand random thieves who really scan his images.

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