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Google Proposes Fighting Piracy By Blocking Ad Money
judgecorp writes "Google has published a report, written by the Performing Rights Society and BAE Detica, which says the way to fight piracy is not to chase the sharers, but to cut off the money in the system. 'Some 86% of advertising on the pirate sites surveyed by Detica comes from networks that have failed to sign up with the UK’s self-regulatory bodies or commit to strong codes of conduct. More than two thirds of the sites that rely on subscriptions or payments display well-known credit card logos. Online advertisers should be encouraged to sign up to self-regulatory codes of conduct. Credit card and online payment facilities, the pirate’s oxygen supply, must be blocked.'But is Google absolutely sure it isn't doing that with AdSense?"
But it won't faze ThePirateBay in the least. Until somebody can come up with a solution to that one,
I wasn't aware ThePirateBay was a "problem"?
You don't seem to remember much from history... The first "Big dog" in piracy was Napster, and they flourished at a time when the vast majority of the public had 56k connections at best. More often than not even slower speeds. All bandwidth caps do is drive consumers to lower quality encoding. The major media outlets probably don't realize it, but this hurts them the most. Despite the fact that they think "pirates" are some parasitic new species that in now way puts money into their system it's quite the opposite. Some of their biggest customers are pirates. The fact of the matter is, they can't get what they want. Which is any movie/show they want at any time, in decent quality at a reasonable price. The media industry seems to think that $300+ per month is a reasonable price for a cable/satellite connection that has "all" the channels, is choked with ever increasing commercials and isn't even on-demand. Add to that, the fact that your forced to scroll through hundreds of channels that you don't want, due to horrible packages forced on the cable providers by content producers.
Piracy is driven, solely, by the media industry that's complaining about it. They could end it tomorrow if they wanted to. But they have this rediculous pipe dream that the internet will lead to them cutting costs by not having to produce physical copies of their media any longer, but at the same time they can raise the price of that very same media. Sorry, that's not going to happen guys. It's 2012, time to get a clue.
Do we? Where do you take your data from?
Personal experience from both sides of the debate - as a former warez user who paid lip service to "Try Before Buy", but now works with an ISV (Independent Software Vendor, if you don't know what it means ...).
The research financed by the big labels? Maybe the same research that generated this
No. These mega-corporations are lying to us, that's obvious.
Working for an ISV helped me realise that downloading and using software from small indie developers without paying for it benefits no one but myself. It certainly doesn't benefit the indie developer in any way!
Nothing sinister. No **AA involved. Just honest, hard working developers with a passion for building products that help people get things done. In the case of these ISV's there generally isn't the luxury of running an international cartel dedicated to screwing over the rights of artists and consumers. We know that piracy hurts our business - at least to a certain extent - but that seems to be lost on people who consider anyone with a website and products to sell to be in the same league as $$MEGA_CORPORATION$$.
Peace,
Andy.
Sorry, you can't fool us into believing that the problem is some imaginary $300 / month subscription fee - we know that pirates are the problem.
The false dichotomy here is thinking only one of them can be the problem. Clearly they have a problem with people whose sole reason for piracy is to save money, whether it's cheapskates who pirate when they can and buy when they must or freeloaders who wouldn't pay anyway, but demoralizes the paying customers - why should they pay when the freeloaders don't. Because of that they're implementing copying restrictions and DRM systems and region codes, annoying unskippable warnings which is also abused for trailers and commercials, pushing for mass surveillance, three/six strike laws that lack judicial oversight and mass shakedowns that are economically impossible to defend against, carry excessive penalties (thousands of dollars for one 99 cent song) and so on.
That pisses a lot of other people off, people who like to run a media server like me. People that run Linux like I did, not anymore but that's a different story. People that have a laptop with no optical drive which they feel they should be able to watch it on. People that feel once they have bought it, they should be able to convert it to watch on their phone or tablet. People that don't like them poking their noses in all private communication. People that don't like kangaroo courts. People that are afraid they'll get a thousands of dollar lawsuit because their wifi was open or their machine was hacked or their tenants or relatives was on P2P. On top of that particularly the TV and movie industry cling to an outdated business model which makes the pirate service far more convenient.
You have a problem with pirates? Well, the feeling is mutual because I have a problem with you because I would like to pay but there's nothing worth paying for. You've made your content so locked up and difficult to access and use as I want that the pirates win without a fight. The service I want you're not willing to offer to me for any price. Your current efforts are futile and the totalitarian society you'd have to build to stomp out piracy is not one I'd care to live in. As far as I'm concerned you're a hindrance to my enjoyment and a menace to society and the best way of neutralizing you would be to take your copyright away. If people want you to continue creating, they'll pay. If not then find some other work. It's not the perfect solution but getting rid of copyright is the lesser evil, you're the greater.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If I had mod-points right now, I'd upvote this. But I don't.
Oh well. You beat me to the punch by mentioning the TvTropes incident. And yes, that is bloody terrifying. Though really, advertising hitting publishers with the money stick to impose their editorial will is nothing new orbiting the sun.
That doesn't mean I have to like it.
The worrying thing is, many of these withdrawals are pretty much automated. Google has an almost machine-like bureaucratic apathy to the advertising world, it's systems grinding mindlessly along uncaring how automated reports are. It'll yank them anyway because it doesn't cost them anything to do so. It's the cheapest and easiest option. It's expensive to actually follow up the report and investigate the actual circumstances.
That requires a salaried employee with a brain.
Or in short form. I agree with everything you said, and just wanted to try post more than 'I agree with everything you said'
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.