Advanced Copyright Law on the Internet

to establish the control prong, it had not pled a viable claim of vicarious liability, and the court
ruled that it need not reach the issue of direct financial interest.^2158

The Ninth Circuit’s rulings were clearly heavily influenced by policy considerations and
a belief that to hold tertiary financial service providers secondarily liable for infringing activities
on web sites for which they processed payments would simply go too far. Indeed, the court
began its analysis of the secondary liability issues with the following:

We evaluate Perfect 10’s claims with an awareness that credit cards serve as the

primary engine of electronic commerce and that Congress has determined it to be

the “policy of the United States – (1) to promote the continued development of the

Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media [and]

(2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the

Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State

regulation.”^2159

(h) Parker v. Google

In Parker v. Google,^2160 pro se plaintiff Gordon Parker was the owner of copyright in an
e-book titled “29 Reasons Not To Be A Nice Guy.” He posted Reason # 6 on USENET. Parker
asserted that Google’s automatic archiving of this USENET content made Google vicariously
liable for copyright infringement because it facilitated users to make unauthorized distributions
and copies of his copyrighted material through Google’s web site, and Google had the right and
ability to supervise or control such user activity and received a substantial financial benefit from
it in the form of advertising revenue and goodwill. The district court rejected this argument for
two reasons. First, Parker had failed to allege infringement of any specific registered works that
were infringed, nor had he alleged specific conduct by a third party that Google may have had
the right and ability to supervise. Second, his broad allegations that Google’s advertising
revenue was directly related to the number of Google users was insufficient to maintain a claim
of vicarious liability, as it did not allege any actual relationship between infringing activity and
the number of users that would demonstrate an obvious and direct financial interest in infringing
activity.^2161 On appeal, the Third Circuit affirmed in an unpublished decision for the reasons
articulated by the district court.^2162

(i) Louis Vuitton v. Akanoc Solutions

In Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc.,^2163 the defendants provided
OSP services that hosted websites through which the plaintiff alleged goods were being sold that

(^2158) Id. at 806.
(^2159) Id. at 794 (quoting 47 U.S.C §§ 230(b)(1), (2)).
(^2160) 422 F. Supp. 2d 492 (E.D. Pa. 2006), aff’d, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 16370 (3d Cir. July 10, 2007).
(^2161) Id. at 499-500.
(^2162) Parker v. Google, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 16370 (3d Cir. July 10, 2007).
(^2163) 591 F. Supp. 2d 109 (N.D. Cal. 2008).