Microsoft under attack from porn company Perfect 10

August 9, 2007 |

Microsoft under attack from porn company Perfect 10

By Jonathan Schlaffer

Microsoft under attack from porn company Perfect 10 Perfect 10 is at it again, after suing Google and losing, it now seeks to sue Microsoft for putting links or links to images of nude models in search results from other web sites that are illegally hosting the material. In case Perfect 10 hasn’t noticed, search engines are automatic, if a human were adding the links, that might be a different story. That’s not going to stop the company.

Perfect 10 has already lost suits against Google, Amazon.com and its A9 Search but it is seeking to have those decisions appealed.

The latest complaint was filed on Tuesday in a California district court that states Microsoft’s MSN image search feature can find passwords posted on other websites and enable access to Perfect 10’s pay-only material. It also alleges that Microsoft gets advertising money from websites that are illegally posting the images.

Norm Zada, the president of Perfect 10 said, “Microsoft has rejected efforts to reach a settlement and Our business is being destroyed.” He continued by saying it’s a life or death situation for the company. That could be called into question.

InfoWorld says that Perfect 10 has sued around 20 or 25 websites but most of those were based in China or Russia and are just slightly out of reach. Instead, Zada will hold the search engines responsible for this problem.

Perfect 10 almost won its first case until a Judge cited “fair use” laws and overturned a previous ruling that would have held the several search engines partially accountable for copyright infringement. Also in the ruling was a statement that said since the images in question were not hosted by Google, Microsoft or any of the other search engines that its more of the third party sites who are at fault.

That decision is being appealed by Zada but no court date has been filed.

I’d bet even money that Microsoft has more money to throw on this problem than Perfect 10 does, just like Google did and perhaps like Amazon did. And with more money comes better lawyers and more legal loopholes.

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