Because Google’s cache merely stores the text of webpages, our analysis of whether Google’s search engine program potentially infringes Perfect 10’s display and distribution rights is equally applicable to Google’s cache. Perfect 10 is not likely to succeed in showing that a cached webpage that in-line links to full-size in fringing images violates such rights. For purposes of this analysis, it is irrelevant whether cache copies direct a user’s browser to third-party images that are no longer available on the third party’s website, because it is the website publisher’s computer, rather than Google’s computer, that stores and displays the infringing image.
- B. Distribution Right
The district court also concluded that Perfect 10 would not likely prevail on its claim that Google directly infringed Perfect 10’s right to distribute its full-size images. Perfect 10, 416 F.Supp.2d at 844–45. The district court reasoned that distribution requires an “actual dissemination” of a copy. Id. at 844. Because Google did not communicate the full-size images to the user’s computer, Google did not distribute these images. Id.
Again, the district court’s conclusion on this point is consistent with the language of the Copyright Act. Section 106(3) provides that the copyright owner has the exclusive right “to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.” 17 U.S.C. § 106(3). As noted, “copies” means “material objects … in which a work is fixed.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. The Supreme Court has indicated that in the electronic context, copies may be distributed electronically. See N.Y. Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483, 498, 121 S.Ct. 2381, 150 L.Ed.2d 500 (2001) (a computer database program distributed copies of newspaper articles stored in its computerized database by selling copies of those articles through its database service). Google’s search engine communicates HTML instructions that tell a user’s browser where to find full-size images on a website publisher’s computer, but Google does not itself distribute copies of the infringing photographs. It is the website publisher’s computer that distributes copies of the images by transmitting the photographic image electronically to the user’s computer. As in Tasini, the user can then obtain copies by downloading the photo or printing it.
Perfect 10 incorrectly relies on Hotaling v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Napster for the proposition that merely making images “available” violates the copyright owner’s distribution right. Hotaling v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 118 F.3d 199 (4th Cir.1997); Napster, 239 F.3d 1004. Hotaling held that the owner of a collection of works who makes them available to the public may be deemed to have distributed copies of the works. Hotaling, 118 F.3d at 203. Similarly, the distribution rights of the plaintiff copyright owners were infringed by Napster users (private individuals with collections of music files stored on their home computers) when they used the Napster software to make their collections available to all other Napster users. Napster, 239 F.3d at 1011–14.
This “deemed distribution” rule does not apply to Google. Unlike the participants in the Napster system or the library in Hotaling, Google does not own a collection of Perfect 10’s full-size images and does not communicate these images to the computers of people using Google’s search engine. Though Google indexes these images, it does not have a collection of stored full-size images it makes available to the public. Google therefore cannot be deemed to distribute copies of these images under the reasoning of Napster or
