Forum Moderators: not2easy
There have been a lot of reports/rantings about their misleading use of images. They seem to identify the topic of a query and then look in their database for matching pictures. Regardless of the source of the picture, they illustrate the search results.
Now, I have been testing some key phrases, and found to my amazement that they have been mking heavy use of those (thumbnail) images to illustrate search results for competing sites.
Questions:
- Is Cuil protected by the DMCA?
- Is Cuil infringing copyrights when they use an image without proper licence to illustrate search results leading to 3rd party websites?
- Do I have to stick to the DMCA process, asking for takedown?
- Or can I sue/send an invoice straight away?
This is quite worrying, because you have no chance to actually catch them infringing unless you know what queries trigger the photos.
Opinions highly welcome.
Syzygy
I understand that OPs thumbnails are shown next to rival sites. That's indeed pretty uncomfortable, since it could give users the impression, that your products are being sold by the competition.
Don't know about the legal issues -- isn't there a way to block the image-spider they use? robots.txt should be enough, I think.
1. Protected - from what?
Liability for infringements. If you run a community platform (e.g. Youtube, Flickr, Myspace) and your users submit/upload content that infringes copyright, the owner of the platform can not be held liable under certain circumstances. It's all laid out in the DMCA.
a landmark courtcase a while back that allowed the use of thumbnails in this type of scenario?
Yep. I think that was Perfect10 vs. Google, and the court ruled that the use of thumbnails along search results can be seen as "fair use" (i.e. not infringing). However, as janharders points out, the problem with Cuil is that they are shoowing the images
- without attribution
- without licence
- randomly next to entries leading to competing websites
isn't there a way to block the image-spider they use
Any further information on this would be great. I _think_ I can block just the whole bot (not just the image bot) using robots.txt
It's a nice image, but who Paul is or what company he works for is a mystery to me.
It's a nice image, but who Paul is or what company he works for is a mystery to me.
*grin*
Cuil is in deep trouble, I think. By now I have read a couple of complaints, and it's almost always the same:
a) I don't want that image associated to my site (ytswy, you're an exception ;-)
b) I don't want any competitor associated to my image
Both are equally valid in my view.
If the image use is random or inappropriate, that defense cannot apply.
Further, there's a theoretical case for damages if the image takes potential visitors to a rival's site, and they spend money with them, not you.
Proving that would be a tad on the 'difficult' side, I suspect :)
[edited by: engine at 3:06 pm (utc) on July 31, 2008]
[edit reason] link removed [/edit]
