14 DAY TRIAL // Nothing in life is free is a lesson that porn publishing company Perfect 10 is getting ready to teach Microsoft, the hard way. The Redmond company is an ignorant, but active participant and a supporter of the online pornographic industry. All thanks to the company's search engines. Microsoft along with rival companies such as Google and AOL on the search engine market, have all integrated image search capabilities into their products. The obvious downside to this functionality is that the automatic indexation process also made no discrimination when scanning pornographic content. As a result, Microsoft's search engine does return porn images in accordance to user queries.
The lawsuit filed by adult entertainment company Perfect 10 against Microsoft, alleges that the Redmond company is guilty of copyright infringement because of the results returned by MSN image search. Perfect 10 claims that the Microsoft search engine offers users thumbnails with its pornographic content. Additionally, Perfect 10 is accusing the Redmond company that the thumbnails can be used to access full-size versions of the models, bypassing the payment strategy that the adult entertainment firm has in place.
But Microsoft is not the only company in such a position. Google and AOL have also been sued by Perfect 10 over the duplication of its content and for the links the search engines are providing. All three Internet giants face copyright infringement accusations from Perfect 10. However, in addition to using Perfect 10 content without the company's explicit permission, Microsoft has allegedly also been offering passwords to the adult entertainment firm's website. Neither Microsoft nor Perfect 10 have commented the situation in any manner up to this point.
Still, Microsoft is put in a delicate position. It has criticized Google in the past over the Mountain View-based search giant's practices involving the handling and introduction of copyrighted materials into the Google index. And now the Redmond company is confronted with similar allegations, but over the most trivial example of online content.