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What the Pirate Bay Verdict Could Mean For Google
explosivejared writes "Forbes is running a story discussing the verdict in the Pirate Bay case and its implications on file sharing, specifically with regard to Google. The article points out what most people on Slashdot already realize: Google provides essentially the same service that the Pirate Bay does. The Pirate Bay case may be far from over, accounting for appeals, but the Pirate Bay's assumption of being unchallengeable was shattered. The article raises the question of whether or not Google is untouchable in the matter. The story is quick to point out how the situation resembles a futile game of cat-and-mouse, but given how the Pirate Bay's confidence was ultimately broken, is Google beyond reproach?"
The pirate bay case means google may have to pay when people use google to download copyrighted material.
Almost sounds like the internet will be treated like a broadcaster on radio stations where money is payed to musicians when a song is played.
and how justice is under the paid service of the corporations, not to mention legislators, and the charade of a fair and free society is being maintained despite corporations and wealthy do not have any problems ignoring and bypassing laws through the power of money if they feel the need. and all is rationalized behind a twisted interpretation of 'freedom' coupled with capitalism.
no. im not socialist. but im this close to being one from what i saw in the recent years.
Read radical news here
..both TPB and Google will eventually be able to rely on the same protection as ISPs. They are neutral carriers of information and therefore should, in law, be held harmless. The Pirate Bays difficulties are that publically they try to deliberately convey an air of behaving unlawfully and dangerously to attract attention. I think the Swedish court bit on this too much, rather than the actual evidence and law. From what I can tell, the legal abilities of the primary Swedish courts don't appear to be too good; previous judgements against Pirate Bay have routinely been overturned on appeal, and I suspect this one will be no different.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The verdict explicitly addresses this point and states that due to TPB running the tracker and thus being intimately involved in the sharing of copyrighted material any comparison with Google is false. They were not convicted because TPB is hosting a bunch of torrent files, they were convicted because they were running a tracker.
What TPB did and Google does not, is format the search results in a way that makes it easy to get exactly what you want. If you use the well known filetype:torrent on Google to search something all you get is the standard high page rank hits first. This with no peer or seed numbers, comments or screen captures,so it is a crap shoot as to actually getting a good file. I guess they will hide behind the term vague search results, or, 'we only provide the links and nothing more'. Now if the comments and seed info were decentralized... well that would be...
flinging poop since 1969
Google can afford billion dollar lawyers.
1. TPB exists primarily to facilitate copyright violation. Google is a common carrier.
2. TPB hosts the BitTorrent tracker files. Google does not.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
This is completely incorrect. Until the appeal has been determined in the case in years, this thing is still in legal limbo. Even new cases will "await the appeal decision".
Thus, this means nothing. The appeal will be everything, as was expected in the first place. All we have is a case of bad reporting/moral panic by forbes.
Look, there'a a huge difference between Google and TPB. It's willfully obtuse to pretend there isn't.
1) Google crawls the Internet and indexes content for searching. It presents search results in the form of hyperlinks to the sites of the people providing the content (exactly the way the WWW was intended to work). Yeah yeah, there is Google Cache, Google News, and Youtube, which occasionally gets them into trouble, but they make efforts to carefully remain within the realm of fair use, including removing copyrighted material from Youtube. One could argue that the WWW would not be able to function without search engines like Google.
TPB, on the other hand, is a website that contains a user-editable index of torrent files people are willing to share. In other words, TPB doesn't crawl for general content that is already publicly available. TPB then facilitates the transactions between users by functioning as a tracker. Torrents are useless without a tracker, so this is a critical difference. Google would not be able to provide the same service as TPB. Yes, you can find torrents via Google, but that is because Google has indexed a tracker like TPB and is just linking to their site.
2) Most of the content accessible through Google is legal, in the sense that the people who own the copyright have shared it explicitly on their website, which is crawled by Google. Most of the content on TPB is not legal, in the sense that the people sharing the files do not own the copyright and are not within the realm of fair use.
3) The content in both Google's search index and TPB's website is trivial to update to remove content that is in violation of copyright. Google willingly does so, usually at the notice of copyright holders. Google also removes content they don't necessarily have to, like Google Streetview images, when requested. TPB consistently refuses to remove content brought to its attention, and often responds with rude, immature, and insulting remarks.
Everybody stop pretending Google and TPB provide the same service. They just don't. Period.
Well hey guys, you could have gotten away with it if your fucking name wasn't The PIRATE Bay..
And that would have made everything OK? Getting away with it?
Isn't that exactly what RIAA's and their lobbyists are doing? Getting away with it.
To quote another slashdotter, quoting Martin Luther King:
From Letters from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr:
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
"Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."
" One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
Stay strong, guys.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Money is what the law is all about! And that is exactly what Google has and TBP doesn't.
TPB the website does not host any content, only links to that content. Typing into Google "filetype:torrent movie" is EXACTLY the same as typing the search term into the Pirate Bay. TPB was convicted of "assisting making available", not actually making the content available. I can click on any of those search results to start downloading the movie hence Google are definitely "assisting making available". Hence they are the same thing.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
This post is a good example of why it's futile to try to legislate this stuff. Your post is so sensible yet so wrong. You want to draw a line and say everything on the left is "providing information" and everything on the right is "indexing information". Where you choose to draw the line is immediately obvious. But, everyone draws the line in a different place!
It is the nature of computer systems to build up layers of indirection. Like answering the question "When is a fetus alive?", everyone has a different idea of when information becomes "alive".
Does Google == TPB?
Google tells me where to find torrent trackers. A torrent tracker tells me where to find a torrent. A torrent tells me where to find bytes 1000-3000 of a file.
TPB is a torrent tracker. A torrent tracker tells me where to find a torrent. A torrent tells me where to find bytes 1000-3000 of a file.
I guess I'm "willfully obtuse" because I don't see a "huge difference" here.
A crow bar is not illegal. I can buy one for as little as $5-$10. It's very useful in construction and demolitions.
But a crow bar can be a terribly violent weapon. Ever banged your shin with one? It would take just a good swing or two to commit murder.
In many jurisdictions, there are laws having to do with "brandishing a weapon", typically in a threatening manner. I can carry a crow bar all day long at a construction site, and nobody would care. If I carried the same crowbar into a fine restaurant, things would be markedly different. If I sold a crowbar to a kid who wanted to help his dad work on the garage, I'd be a nice guy. If I sold the same crowbar to a kid who wanted to off his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend, I could easily be an accessory to murder.
Intent matters. It's not the tool, it's the act!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I think if Google where to start removing links to copyrighted content other than as required by the law, it would very soon cease being the world favorite search engine.
Can you imagine the outcry on here and Geekdom in general if Google decided to censor results in this way? I'm pretty sure some other search engine would appear without these restrictions and quickly become all computer geeks new baby. I'm also sure the Google is shewed enough to realize this.
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
Nothing, you morons.
Google is a web search engine.
TPB is a torrent search engine.
Google's tools are designed to make is easy to search the web.
TPB's tools make it easy to download copyrighted material.
This is the same BS that came up after the Napster trial, and is BS for the very same reason.
Put simply:
Google is designed to search the Web.
TPB is designed to assist piracy.
I know we're all well aware of the 80/20 rule..but apparently that goes out the window in your efforts to rationalize your overblown sense of entitlement to the creative works of others.