May 8, 2012 | The Biz

Tumblr sued over images posted by users

Tumblr, a major image blogging platform, is being sued by adult company Perfect 10 over the use of copyrighted images by various bloggers. The lawsuit was filed on Friday, and in it Perfect 10 is claiming that Tumblr Inc not only allowed copyright infringement to take place, but that the company stole images itself in order to get the business started.

Perfect 10 is seeking $5 million in damages.

"This is very straightforward," Perfect 10 President Norm Zada said. "We decided to sue Tumblr because they didn't respond to any of our [six] DMCA requests."

A DMCA (Digitial Millenium Copyright Act) takedown notice is sent by a copyright holder to an infringing website. The infringer is required to respond, usually with the removal of the copyrighted material. Zada said that many other websites have cooperated with Perfect 10 take down notices, but “I’m not sure anyone’s checking [tumblr's] email.” 

This is not Perfect 10's first copyright battle. They took Google to court in 2004 over the search engine's use of thumbnail images in its search results. The court found in Google's favor, stating that the thumbnails in search results were fair use under copyright law. However, Tumblr uses full-sized images.

Should Perfect 10 win this current bit of litigation, there might be attempts to take on other blog hosts like Blogger and Wordpress, with social media sites like Facebook also potential defendants.

"We just need a court that is sympathetic to our case," Zada admitted.

Publisher sues Tumblr over porn pics [Paid Content]

Perfect 10 Sues Tumblr Over Posted Images [XBiz]