Tag Archives: law

Perfect 10 Comes Out Swinging at Google Again

Posted on December 2, 2009 by cgseo

Those who have been following the search industry for some time, may recall that Google had some legal issues with the (former) magazine Perfect 10 (nsfw). The company, which ceased publication of its magazine, but still operates on the web, has issued a press release saying that its five year battle with the search giant is "about to heat up." This week, Perfect 10 completed its filing of a motion for sanctions against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Perfect 10 is accusing Google of "widespread discovery abuse," which the company says includes multiple violations of three separate court orders. Perfect 10's legal feud with Google began back in 2004. The case dealt with Google's use of thumbnails from Perfect 10's site. It was essentially a question of whether or not that was considered fair use. Google had eventually lost the case, but the ruling against Google had been tossed out by an appeals panel . That was in 2007. However, it did not end there. Fast forward to now. "Google appears to have the view that it is above the law," says Perfect 10 President, Dr. Norm Zada. "We spent a great deal of time and effort obtaining Court orders requiring Google to produce documents critical to our case. In our view, Google has not complied with those orders." Perfect 10 says the case revolves around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was passed by Congress in 1998 to address issues concerning copyright infringement on the Internet. "Under the DMCA, a search engine such as Google may receive limited immunity from monetary damages for copyright infringement if it complies with the requirements of the DMCA," Zada says. "The search engine must act expeditiously to remove or disable access to infringing material upon receiving notice of infringement from the copyright owner, and it must adopt a procedure so that copyright holders will not have to provide the search engine with notices about the same infringing material or the same infringers over and over." Perfect 10 says it has argued that Google has "failed to satisfy" these things. Perfect 10 says a judge ordered Google to produce its DMCA log, which the company says is defined as "a spreadsheet-type document summarizing DMCA notices received, the identity of the notifying party and the accused infringer, and the actions (if any) taken in response." Perfect 10 is insisting in its press release that Google has violated multiple court orders, and that Perfect 10 can't "fairly litigate the case" without such documents. Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Legal, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amp, case, congress, digital, fairly-litigate, immunity, internet, law, Legal, motion for sanctions, perfect, search, search industry, search-engine, time | Leave a comment

Google Takes us to Law School

Posted on November 17, 2009 by admin

As you know, Google's ultimate goal is to organize the world's information. With this in mind, it should be no surprise that Google is organizing full-text legal opinions from United States federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. The company is using its Google Scholar service to do so. "As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country," says Google Distinguished Engineer Anurag Acharya. "That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that's a problem: Laws that you don't know about, you can't follow — or make effective arguments to change." You can now search Google Scholar to find opinions by searching specific cases (like Plessy v. Ferguson) or topics (like desegregation). You can type a phrase like "separate but equal" and get results for cases in which such a phrase is in included. Users can look at cases that are related to others by using the links that say "Cited by" and "Related articles" on the results pages. This is useful for following citations within the opinions themselves. Google thinks being able to search these opinions will "empower the average citizen" by helping them learn more about the laws that govern them. It does appear to be a great way to educate yourself on legal issues without having to go to law school. Furthermore, it could be of tremendous benefit to students who are actually in law school. "As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and accessible these opinions are," says Acharya. "Court opinions don't just describe a decision but also present the reasons that support the decision. In doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in the context of real-life situations. And they often do it in language that is surprisingly straightforward, even for those of us outside the legal profession. In many cases, judges have gone quite a bit out of their way to make complex legal issues easy to follow." Google really is working non-stop on "organizing the world's information". This particular instance may only apply to the U.S. (and such a feature could get awfully tricky on a global scale), but it would not be surprising to see more countries' data get included in the future. Related Articles: > Google News Organizes a Lot More of the World's Information > 20,000 Sources Added to Google News in a Year's Time > Google Puts News on a Timeline Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Legal, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged civics, google scholar, jurisdictions, law, phrase, plessy v ferguson, review and story, search | Leave a comment