[Leica] 5 Senses Article / CNET NEWS.COM

[MGMcGough@aol.com]

 By Courtney Macavinta
 Staff, CNET NEWS.COM
 April 16, 1997, 3:30 p.m. PT 
 Authorities have raided a San Diego Web publisher and seized thousands of
digital images that Playboy Enterprises says it owns.
 
 Federal marshals, accompanied by two attorneys from Playboy, conducted the
raid yesterday on Five Senses Productions and copied images stored on three
computers owned by Francesco Sanfilippo. After the duplicates were made, the
images were erased from the computers.
 
 The action against Five Senses and Sanfilippo is the latest in a series of
legal actions Playboy has initiated to protect its copyrighted images from
unauthorized use on the Internet. 
 
 Sanfilippo operates Five Senses, a subscription-based service that filters
Usenet newsgroups. Launched in December, Five Senses charges a $5 monthly fee
to about 1,000 subscribers, who then get access to adult entertainment images.
 
 Sanfilippo said in an interview today that he pulled 4,000 to 5,000 images
from the Net each day and that he had no way of knowing which belonged to
Playboy. He admitted that Playboy warned him in both December and January to
remove specific images on his site. He says he complied.
 
 "Playboy failed to inform me that some other images on my Web site were
violating copyright," he said today. "These images were retrieved from public
newsgroups over the Net. I didn't do any of the actual scannings; I don't even
own a scanner. The copyright symbol wasn't on any of the images, so I didn't
really know where it came from."
 
 But Playboy says Sanfilippo knew what he was doing.
 
 "Once warned, he would take the pictures down for a while, then rename the
images and the index and put the same images back up," Playboy spokeswoman
Rebecca Theim said today. "He was also selling CD-ROMs with our images. Many
of the pictures were well-known Playboy images, such as those of Pamela
Anderson."
 
 Playboy is cracking down on suspected piracy of copyrighted property because
it is launching a new subscription-based service in the next few weeks, which
is in beta now. The raid was carried out after Playboy had obtained a
temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction from federal Judge
Irma E. Gonzalez.
 
 "Whether they were scanned from a magazine by someone else or he physically
scanned them is not the issue. He was selling copyrighted material from his
site that he was warned not to do," Theim added. "We will never let other
people use our copyrights [without authorization], whether they are for sale
or not."
 
 Sanfilippo says he was told that he will get back any seized images that did
not belong to Playboy. As for now, he plans to stay in business.
 
 "If I'm supposedly an infringer, then the person who runs the newsgroups
server is an infringer. So that would make every single ISP an infringer,"
Sanfilippo said. "Why aren’t they going after them?"
 
 Playboy will ask for a permanent injunction against Five Senses at a hearing
is scheduled next Friday, to stop the business from using its images in the
future. Playboy has not determined whether it will take further action against
Sanfilippo. 
 
 
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 •  Hallmark in copyright squabble January 7, 1997 
 •  Playboy charges, users pay January 3, 1997