Naughty Gooooogle

It seems poor Google can't do anything right nowadays. The Australian reports that a U.S. judge has ruled they have infringed the copyright of a porn company:

The type of search with which Perfect 10 took issue is Google's "Image Search" function, which returns a page with tiny images - known as thumbnails - that fit the searcher's query.

The image search function also allows searchers to view the image as it appears on the page.

The judge ruled that because Google received advertising money from offering search functions, it was not entitled to the same level of free use of the images as other entities would be.

Apparently this is an issue because the porn company sells the images for use on mobile phone screens. Hell, we wouldn't want the bogans of the world to get their mobile screens all porned up for free, would we?

Evil porn company bests the "goodie goodies". It is an interesting blow to Google, whose "Do no evil" mandate is taking a bit of a battering recently with their recent foray into censorship, I mean, China. Not that this is a serious miss step, I just like the image.

I also like this image (from Boing Boing)


Not that I have anything against Google. I think it is admirable what they have been trying to do (well up until this point), I just think that all successful companies end up sprawling so far that they take on a life and a morality all of their own.

Tags: Google, legal, porn