“Copyright owners worldwide are seeing their businesses slowly fail as a result of ongoing massive infringement and require immediate relief from the ninth circuit,” Zada said.
The court granted the majority of Google’s motions for summary judgment under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The court also denied Perfect 10’s second motion for preliminary injunction.
The motion was intended to stop Google from copying and displaying Perfect 10 images including placing Google ads around the images and misusing the names and images of Perfect 10 models for Google’s commercial purposes.
“The net result of both rulings is that Google can continue to abuse our intellectual property on a massive scale for its own commercial benefit without paying us a dime and there is very little we can do about it,” Zada said.
“Google is doing the same thing to movie studios, recording companies, magazines and news reporting organizations.”
According to Zada, the rulings are confusing and do not clearly explain how copyright holders can issue notices to protect their property. But based on his understanding of the rulings, Zada believes that Google can now disregard most notices sent to it by rights holders.
Based on Zada’s interpretation of the rulings, Google can continue to place ads around celebrity images without paying the celebrity.
Also according to Zada, Google can disregard any notice regarding infringement on paysites that are Google advertisers and from which Google receives payment for promoting those websites.
These rulings allow Google to continue to receive promotional payments from websites that it knows steal and sell massive quantities of movies, software, songs and other intellectual property, according to Zada.
In addition, Zada said, Google need only remove links if they go directly to an infringing image or work.
In other words, Google can continue to provide thousands of links to a website that it knows steals and sells cars, as long as Google does not provide a direct link to an actual car, according to Zada.
“In short, my interpretation of these recent rulings is that Google can massively exploit other people’s property for its own commercial gain, publish whatever confidential information it chooses, and there is not much anyone can do about it,” Zada said.
Zada also said the take-down notices Perfect 10 sent to Google contained a copy of the infringing pages with the P10 images on that page clearly marked, along with the necessary DMCA language.
However, Zada said, “The court ruled that every one of those notices was deficient, either because it was too complicated or because we did not identify the infringed image, even though we provided a copy of it.”