Norm Zada
Norm Zada (born Norman Askar Zadeh) is the founder of Perfect 10, an adult magazine focusing on women without cosmetic surgery. Zada launched the magazine after a friend was rejected from Playboy magazine because her proportions did not fit the magazine's tastes.[1] He estimates losing approximately $46 million on Perfect 10 since 1996, when the magazine was first published.
His magazine was the plaintiff in Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., a lawsuit charging contributory copyright infringement through the search engine displaying thumbnails of Perfect 10 images hosted at unauthorized third-party sites. Other lawsuits Zada filed involved adult verification system supplier Cybernet Ventures, from which he received a confidential settlement, and Visa and Mastercard, where he alleged that these credit card companies benefited from fees charged to access unauthorized material at third-party pay sites.[2]
Prior to starting Perfect 10, he obtained a doctorate in operations research at the University of California, Berkeley and worked at IBM and was an adjunct mathematics professor at Stanford University, Columbia University, UCLA, and UC Irvine, writing textbooks on computer science.[3] After teaching, he became a championship poker player and money manager.[4] Zadeh made headlines in 1996 when he offered $400,000 for anyone successfully refuting Zadeh's claim that balancing the United States federal budget would be an "economic disaster".[5]
Zada at one time owned a large mansion in Beverly Park which he sold in 2010 for $16.5 million.[6]
He is the son of Lotfi Zadeh, a computer scientist who researched fuzzy logic mathematics.
References
- ↑ FoRK Archive: Perfect 10
- ↑ Perfect 10 Sues Visa/MasterCard - XBIZ.com
- ↑ Amazon.com: Norman Zadeh: Books
- ↑ Defending against a Google assault - ZDNet UK
- ↑ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_19960204/ai_n10230333[]
- ↑ Lauren Beale, Norm Zada sells his Beverly Park compound, Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2010, accessed May 8, 2011.