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Google in Trouble for Suggesting Illegal Software
JehCt writes "Google is being sued over the 'suggest' feature built into its latest toolbar. InfoWorld reports: 'ServersCheck, a small company that makes network monitoring software,' is complaining that, 'If ServersCheck is entered, Google generates suggested search terms such as serverscheck crack, serverscheck pro crack and serverscheck keygen which lead to pirated software.' In an apparent public relations blunder, Google claimed to have no way of filtering suggestions. However, Google can and does filter because the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'."
The exhaustive results of google search is one thing, but making suggestions to illegal activity in the toolbar is taking it a bit over the line.
Funnypics
They start censoring individual keywords there is going to be no quality control, since obviously they can't work with every keyword that entered on google or in the toolbar.
If there is an automated way, what is there to prove that a competitor is not doing it?
-nick
...that more people are interested in pirated copies of their software than their actual brand? I'm far from an expert at the workings of search engine toolbars (hate 'em), but doesn't that particular function bring up the most popular searches for that keyword?
Telling Google to filter those selections is rediculous! If the company doesn't like people supplying cracks/serials then go after the offender... not Google just because they no they exist. I'm tired of all this crap. Pretty soon the MPAA and RIAA will go after Google because they index illegal mp3 and movies. What the hell is wrong with this world?
http://religiousfreaks.com/Is that anyone can sue anybody for anything, even if it's later:
a. tossed out of court;
b. found totally without cause; or
c. settled because the group/person being sued doesn't have enough legal firepower or deep pockets to fight the case.
I predict that Google, who have just a teeny bit of money, isn't too worried about this one.
Now, if it were say a Linux distro being sued by say a Unix license owner who claimed they had stolen their code, that's another animal, but that's because most distros don't have deep pockets or lawyers to throw on fires for no good reason.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why would anyone even use such a toolbar?
Back in the 2600 case over the DeCSS source code the courts said that it was effectively illegal to link to something illegal.
Since then I've been wondering when the major search engines were going to be sued because they link to illegal content such as child porn and pirated software.
It'll be interesting to see how this pans out and if Google does lose you can surly expect to see others joining in against them and others due to the precedent it sets.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
...when Google just brought to their attention that certain websites were pirating their software and offered to list each of those sites for them?
I don't like installing toolbars, but you can dink around with the suggest feature here
Man, you really need that seminar!
From the Google Suggest FAQ, "Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers." Perhaps they have turned off suggestions for a few obvious terms (porn, etc), but I doubt they are actually filtering the searches used to rank the refinements - this would be quite difficult to do in general. Expecting google to weed through all of the searches that have been made in order to find what some might consider to be illegal would be absurd.
They should stop filtering on the word "porn"
I think the original poster might be wrong about Google's ability to filter. There's a difference blocking suggestions for the keyword "porn" and blocking only the "illegal" suggestions for "ServersCheck". Going by the logic in the post, Google could probably only easily block *all* sugggestions for "ServersCheck", not just the illegal ones. I'm pretty sure the software company wouldn't like that option...
He's trying to get Google to change the Suggest results. Van Laere uses Google's tool for analyzing Web traffic and found that about 93 percent of ServerCheck's customers come to their Web site by way of the popular search engine.
"We don't have any problems with the fact that in Google you can find illegal copies of our software," Van Laere said. "There are people who will never buy the product at the end of the day.
So they really weren't harmed, they just want some google cash! I noticed they refiled the suit. Did the first one get thrown out? Why is litigation always the first thing companies do? It seems they can't try just working out their differences by communication. If 93 percent of your customers are coming by way of google, do they really want to have the term servercheck blocked? They can block porn because it's an input term, not an output suggestion. See the difference?
Interesting, they took the FAQ offline http://labs.google.com/intl/en/suggestfaq.html Also - there are plenty of adult things you can bring up in suggest, just very very basic words like "porn" are blocked.
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
With your software's name are "crack" and "keygen", you *might* need to take a good long look at your licensing and pricing model.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What ServersCheck is asking Googles is to stop suggesting that people search for Serverscheck crack, when they were possibly trying to just search for ServersCheck.
Now that I've stated teh obvious, this seems a perfectly fair thing to ask, both legally and ethically, even considering free speech, and the fact that the present model is ultimately based on the actual results/user request - which is a really nice way incidentally.
Google Suggest, even if GOOG would probably want to potray it as more of a user trend analysis tool, seems to be on shaky ground, as it seems intuitive to think of it more of a guidance system based on the value it actually provides.
Wouldn't Google still be considered a common carrier? They didn't produce the stuff, why would they filter it.
.. if a common carrier started to filter out results that they thought were unfavorable, then they'd have to filter ALL illegal content, because then they become a delivery source.
IIRC
So why is Google filtering the stuff?
Or would they not be common carrier?
= Grow a brain...
Aggregated information is just that: information. It is not owned or copyrighted by anyone. The judge should simply rule that Google is not the one to sue, because they do not own the fact that 1000 people searched for this result.
If they do manage to outlaw bringing up search results with words like "crack," won't the cracker scene just come up with some other lingo? I could write something that does the same thing and call it a "Floyd" instead of a "crack," and if that catches on you'll get just as many illicit search results for "ServersCheck Floyd." And then what, will they sue over searches for "Floyd?"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Their pricing doesn't seem to be particularly out of line. If you find their software useful, it's certainly reasonable.
This guy's the limit!
This "problem" is not limited to ServersCheck. A Google 'Suggest' search for just about any popular software package will turn up entries that include the words "crack", "serial" or "keygen".
Just for kicks I tried the following queries:
Photoshop
Paintshop
Autocad 2005
3d Studio Max
Fruity Loops
Windows 2000 Pro
Office 2003
Soundforge
*All* of them resulted in illicit entries appearing in the suggestions box.
You don't see France suing over this!
I don't understand why this would be illegal. Immoral maybe, and a definite bug, but illegal? Google could just as easily dump serverscheck out of its index. There's nothing illegal about that. Why do they legally have to return results favorable to serverscheck?
.. comes great responsibility!
Either that or you have teenagers, or are running a Personal Telco node, or are simply trying to learn enough to get that job doing enterprise level monitoring... I can think of large numbers of other reasons for wanting this level of monitoring on a personal network.
And that last one is the guy you WANT to learn your software, and should be providing a $23 CD to with a license to monitor under 5 nodes. If he gets used to using it on his home network, he'll come to you for the $1500 license when he gets hired.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
for those of you who didn't RTFA, the suit was filed in Belgium. Unless Bush has invaded them recently, I'm pretty sure US law doesn't apply there...
I must say though, if we're going to get serious about monitoring the content on the internet (not saying we should...); this needs to be handled as international law because it's just retarded to do this on a country by country basis...
Their hardware price list is in line with what I've seen for this stuff- their software price list is what leaves something to be desired (and after all, who's going to pirate the hardware at those prices anyway? You'd spend more on the components to solder together than the actual cost of buying it prebuilt). Software though is easier to copy- and while their prices are in line with competitors, they need an expanded licensing scheme to take into account academic and hobbyist users. I realize most people think "we don't want those as customers anyway"- but chances are this is where 90% of your piracy is, and also it's good advertising to get into new markets later on.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Legitimacy is determined by whether it's ethical and moral, not whether it's legal!
Then it'd be called "ethicitimacy" or "moritimacy", not "legitimacy".
However, Google can and does filter because the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'
Perhaps, but if you are more creative, you can get interesting suggestions for things like "dirty s" or "pus" or "nip". And, hey! Whaddya know... "p0rn" and "pr0n" each produce suggestions. =)
The 2600 decision was unconstitutional on the face of it. The first amendment lets a newspaper tell citizens where a red light district is without fear of being hauled up on pandering charges. The last 25 years have seen our federal courts loaded with pro-business, defacto right wing judges who have markedly ruled against the consumer and for more invasive corporate power.
Google shouldn't have to filter a damned thing.
Software to crack your own property is morally proper, no matter what laws the rich bastards have purchased. The "license to use, but you don't own this disk or the software" idea is manure. You buy it, you own it. That's how physical transactions work. An author of a book doesn't get to tell you how to read, store, or dispose of the book after you purchase it. Well, right now he can't. Wait a couple of years.
This is how people lose faith in the law. Make enough stupid, vicious laws to make powerful people happy, and soon no one respects the law, since they KNOW it's a scam to make powerful wealthy people happy.
I'm starting to see the end of the internet as we've known it. It's turning into corporate-controlled 21st century TV, complete with vice squads and corporate private cops busting people.
Time to start building encrypted darknet transmission systems, kids. The dark times are starting.
Page 1 of 1,548 results containing "MS Cracks" (0.12 seconds)
Web Results
Page 1 of 1,673,265 results containing MS Cracks (0.10 seconds)
That's why we use Google :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This company's going to get shot down if they face Google in court. Their example of filtering is the opposite of what they're complaining about. They give an example of Google not offering suggestions for "sex", which means Google is filtering the input keywords. They then complain that Google doesn't exclude "servercheck keygen" from the result set for "servercheck", which would involve filtering the output set. Google's response will be, quite properly, "Yes, we can look at keywords and not offer any suggestions for a certain set of keywords. But that's not what you're asking. You're asking for us to filter the set of suggestions returned for potentially any set of keywords and remove certain suggestions but not others. And what criteria do we use to decide what's legitimate? "keygen" is entirely legitimate as a keyword for software to let authors generate license keys to issue to buyers of their own software, after all.".
Scientology not wanting any critic sites suggested.
RIAA not wanting any alternative music/non-big 4 music sites suggested.
It would never end, and we end users are all poorer when censorship happens.
And don't think for a moment this company won't ask to have other download sites removed the moment it is proved it's possible. Google's defence has to be that it's not possible in an automated system.
Lastly, filter out crack and it will simply become cr@ck. You get the idea.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here we have a classic example of not understanding how things work. It is relatively easy to prevent searches for specific items such as "porn", "pussy", etc. One simply provides a list of terms in the program that result in no search being performed. Here is some psuedo-code.
@banned_words="porn","pussy","dick";
foreach word in @banned_words {
if ( @search_terms=~m/$word/ ) {
$naughty=1;
break;
}
}
return 1 if ($naughty);
do_search(@search_terms);
As one can see, it is a very simple operation which, as other have pointed out, is easily circumvented.
Filtering the results is a much trickier proposition because there is context involved.
The same code applied to results would prevent results containing "pussy cat" from appearing in a search for "cat". It would also prevent any referrence to someone named "Dick" from appearing in, say, a search of Vice Presidents or actors.
In the case of the results listed ("serverscheck crack", "serverscheck pro crack", and "serverscheck keygen")trying to filter "crack" and or keygen would result in a large number of valid sights being block for OTHER searches. Imagine the results from search on ssh-keygen if one filters "keygen" out of the results.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Google can and does have the ability to filter out search terms like "britney spears naked" and other offensive terms like that. And in response to all of the people who say stuff like "crack" has plenty of legitimate uses, i would argue that the word "naked" and/or "nude" has just as many legitimate uses, and google suggest filters them out.
Anyways, i completely agree with what they are saying... I have no problem with google trying to use google to search for illegal software, but when they are trying to search for legal software, and google suggests to search for illegal software, that is a problem... IMO, google should be able to filter it out the same way they do for pornographic results from the google suggest bar.
If there's anything more important than my ego around, i want it caught and shot now.
The software company is just going to have to make their software harder to crack. Research on anything can yield an opportunity to do something that's in violation of somebody's idea of a copyright violation. Google is just giving search results. Google doesn't promote any of them except the sponsored ones you see on top.
(||) Nehmo (||)
Those guys should actually think about the reason cracks of their software have more rating than their software, it is of course the result of bad... ... well bad everything , bad management, bad marketting, bad prizing.
The happy outcome is that google is getting sued perhaps because google has the money, instead, sueing the guys that make the cracks or distribute them would be harder and more difficult to get benefits from
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I think google is the wrong adress to file a lawsuit against... it just shows you, which results were most often visited/searched in connection with this keyword...
;)
this gives me an idea... I'll patend terminating turing machines... and if google has a link to a site containing a turing machine in their search result, they must find out if it ever terminates and filter it out if it does or they infringe the patent...
maybe I'd use this patent only against msn
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Google can just filter all hits that involve the term "ServersCheck."
For another example: here
First of all, I take it from the name "ServersCheck" that this piece of software is a remote administration tool. Since very few competent admins would rely on a cracked piece of software to monitor their equipment, it's got to be warez kiddies doing the cracking (and probably not even using the software). You know, 0-day oneupsmanship.
Now, do you see the inherent flaw in letting warez kiddies dictate the pricing structure of your product?
Photoshop must be the most widely cracked software out there, second only to Windows XP (just a guess). It's not terribly expensive - $700 or so, right? - and there are both low-cost and free alternatives (Photoshop Elements, the Gimp, etc.). Does that stop anyone from cracking Photoshop CS? Nope.
Supply and demand dictate the price of your product. ServersCheck and Photoshop CS are not high-demand mass-market consumer products. They're priced accordingly. And since they're used by professionals, there's a return on the investment. Theoretically, ServersCheck will maximize your uptime. My legit copy of Photoshop CS has allowed me to generate thousands of dollars of income for my company (not that I couldn't have done that with the Gimp, but I've been using Photoshop since version 2.51 and I'm pretty set in my ways).
While supply and demand controls pricing, you hope that your product sells enough to recoup your investment in development, distribution, and marketing, along with covering your recurring expenses and perhaps a bit of profit on top of that. If not, you cut expenses. Adobe is a publicly traded company; while cutting the price of Photoshop CS2 might push a few more units out the door, that would come at the expense of profits and perhaps result in a net loss. Cue the shareholder revolt in 3...2...1...
Finally, the whole warez culture is not about being able to use software that you can't afford. It's all about hoarding, the digital equivalent of those ladies who live with 50 cats. It's irrational. Why you would want to hitch the pricing of your product to that sort of thing is even crazier.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Company X: "We don't want our product mentioned in the same search results as 'cracks'! "
Nation X: "We don't want our nation mentioned in the same search results as 'democracy'! "
Religion X: "We don't want our religion mentioned in the same search results as 'evolution'! "
To paraphrase that great thinker, Yoda, "Once you start down the path of filtering, forever will it dominate your destiny."
Or was it "Start down path the filtering of once you, destiny dominate it forever your will." Something like that. But then he said a lot of stupid stuff when he was drunk.
Google isn't a public service. When they say they "Can't filter", it's likely because it sends them down a slippery slope towards being unable to run a search engine. Ok, let's get rid of thte cracks. Now the warez. Now all the strange misspellings of those two. Well Jesus, thare are a billion pages on Google. To go through each one to make sure it's not illegal somehow would require trolling the entire internet.
In ths case, we're not talking about filtering individual web pages but suggested search terms. Sure, they could filter those too, technologically. However, we get the same problem; It's going to mean some poor sap going through each search term and trying find the offensive or illegal ones. They could try just filtering some terms, but then you get things like this, with them being called hypocrites.
In the end, between the additional logistics required to filter every time someone complains and the additional drain on computer resources to do so, it's a more acceptable business decision to get the whiney people to go away than to try to appease them.
It's been a long time.