14 DAY TRIAL // I've been told an interesting story under the QT once, about the fact that we're still using DVDs because most of the porn that is for sale at the moment, on the internet, is available on them, and that when the big boys decide that they feel like moving to the next largest storage capacity medium, the whole world will make the jump forward. I thought it was a load of stupid stuff at the moment, but I don't know why I've never forgot about it. Could it be possible? Highly unlikely, I think.
Anyway, it is a proven fact that starting from absolutely any site you can click on links to other sites and, eventually, you'll be hitting porn content in no time. With that in mind, it's surprising that a porn site would want to block Google, the world's biggest search engine, from indirectly advertising it.
Huch Medien GmbH, the operator of an erotic site Amateurstar.de, is going after Arcor, Germany's second-biggest telecom company, for allowing their customers to view pornographic content without using age verification technology beforehand. Barry Schwartz, of searchengineland.com, justly observed that this was probably the easiest possible rout for the operator to take, because going up against Google is... way out of its league, just for starters. Instead of using a copyright violation as the legal action, Huch Medien GmbH has been using Germany's Youth Protection Act.
Not all so long ago, another pornography site has actually sued Google for displaying thumbnails of its images in Google Image search. Despite an original ruling in favor of Perfect 10, the appeal made by Google had the court end the displaying of the thumbnails halt. The appellate court wrote at the time, as reported by Schwartz, that "We conclude that Perfect 10 is unlikely to be able to overcome Google's fair use defense and, accordingly, we vacate the preliminary injunction regarding Google's use of thumbnail images."