Google in hot water over nude picture searches

A US men's magazine is suing Google for copyright infringement for including thousands of pictures of nude women in Google image search results.

Perfect 10 magazine is seeking a preliminary injunction against Google, which it claims is benefiting from advertising revenue generated by copying, displaying and distributing its copyrighted images. Many of Perfect 10's 3,000 images have been downloaded and published on other websites.

Perfect 10 generates revenue by charging site users for passwords to view the images, but Google's text search also brings up results for 'Perfect 10 passwords'.

The magazine initially filed a complaint against Google in November 2004, emailing the search giant 30 times to request that the copyrighted images and password details be removed from search results.

Norman Zada, founder of Perfect 10, said in a statement that much of Google's search engine traffic is generated by adult content and that "misappropriation of intellectual property" had contributed to its extraordinary revenues.

Google has said that the lawsuit has no merit and will be "defending itself vigorously".

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