In terms of intellectual property, the lines are continuing to blur on exactly what constitutes fair use and what constitutes piracy and theft. While the American court systems have sometimes done a better job than the other branches of government in seeing the shades of grey between the two extremes, there still remains a definite cluelessness on the part of American Government (as well as many other world governments) on how intellectual property should be treated online.
Perfect 10 Inc said in court papers that its business had been severely harmed by pirate Web sites, many of them overseas, which have used images of its nude models without prior authorization. Instead of pursuing action against the proprietors of the sites, the company instead responded to the piracy by suing several of the companies that run advertisements on these sites, including Google, Amazon, MasterCard and Visa as well as CCBill and CWIE.
All in all, though, its probably best that the Supreme Court didn't use this particular case to set precedent on what is and is not fair use online. Perfect 10's case was particularly weak, as the primary usage of their images they were seeking to stop in this case revolved around Google's tendency to index and keep copies of thumbnails of Perfect 10's images in the Google Image Search service.
Source: Supreme Court Petition Papers
[via Washington Post]