Slashdot Mirror
RIAA: Google Failing To Demote Pirate Websites
Nerval's Lobster writes "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims that Google has failed in its attempt to lower the search-results rankings of so-called 'pirate' Websites. "We have found no evidence that Google's policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy," read the report's summary (PDF). 'These sites consistently appear at the top of Google's search results for popular songs or artists.' Last August, Google indicated that it would start lowering the search-result rankings of Websites with high numbers of 'valid' copyright removal notices. 'This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it's a song previewed on NPR's music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed on Spotify,' Amit Singhal, Google's senior vice president of Engineering, wrote in a corporate blog posting at the time. Google, which receives millions of copyright removal notices every month, also offers a counter-notice tool for those who believe their Websites have been unfairly targeted for copyright violations."
The RIAA can fuck off.
A search engine is supposed to search and display what it finds. I'll be the one to do the filtering
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I want my search engine to search the web for my query. Do not try to figure out what sort of legitimate use I have for my query, give me the results! Maybe I'm a copyright infringer trying to steal music, and maybe I'm a gun happy lawyer trying to sue the pants of the site owners.
"We have found no evidence that Google's policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy,"
when does the riaa hollywood accounting get some action? Ripping off hard working artists with manipulative deals is fraud in other businesses.
Anecdotal observation here.
Went to Google and typed in Mumford. Guess what, no pirate sites appeared on the first page.
But there was a Wired article complaining about the "no unauthorized copying lending public performance etc. statement on the back of their latest album.
Maybe the RIAA doesn't want us noticing that the 'no unauthorized lending clause' has no legal basis.
The pirate sites will be more popular (therefore more clicks, therefore higher rank; regardless of negations made on behalf of a dying business model) than the legitimate ones until the RIAA (et al.) stop reaming both consumers and artists alike.
On Google when you type the query "politics" or "government".
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Yes, because everyone *else* in the world even remotely/tangentially having anything to do with digital media, has an obligation to spend considerable time and money protecting Sony, BMG. etc.'s business.
Search engines must hire additional coders to ensure that internet is censored as per Sony 's whims. Hardware manufacturing companies must spend significant extra money on ensure DRM compliance. ISPs must spy on their customers to ensure that no copyright-infringement happens. Police which is funded by public tax money(you and me) must spend valuable time and effort on catching the nefarious "music stealers". Senators who are elected by the people and paid by public tax money, must instead ensure laws favoring BMG/Sony that make copying files a worse crime than rape or murder.
Whereas, the same "victim" companies, move their headquarters outside to cheat the American public out of the benefits of any tax money they might have had to pay. We have all the obligations to them. They have none to us or even the actual creators of the said music etc.
Soon doctors will likely be required to ensure that they perform free deafening procedures on everyone who might end up listening to "infringing music".
The solution is simple. Realize that lobbying is equivalent to bribery and force your senator to pass a law against it.
Oh yeah? I searched for "useless twits", "thieving bastards" and "lying motherfuckers" and in none of the cases did "RIAA" appear near the top of the list. Clearly google has a lot of work to do to fix their search engine...
But Google really is a monolithic corporate which knows what it's users want, how to deliver it to them and how to make money from that. In short, Google knows how to use the internet to it's advantage rather than wasting all of it's resources trying to find the off switch.
The PDF has a very handy list of "notorious" sites, many of which were new to me. The RIAA should have Googled "Streisand Effect" before they released that....
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
You're right, if the RIAA's figures aren't outrageously skewed ... (...) Google might be acting in bad faith.
I think I need a hug.
It's also possible that Google did exactly what they said. The only problem is that far more people were interested in looking for the pirated material than were interested in looking up the bands so the pirated sites were still near the top even after the downranking.
A black market will exist as long as there is a reason for it. The more money that is siphoned out of our pockets by the swine of an unproductive industry, the further we will go to protect our interests. I'd love to believe Hollywood helped better our education system or somehow improved our standards of living... and maybe it is anti-american to believe it has taken more then it has given... yet I pay a hidden tax on all my blank media and generate add revenue for the american music lables on my youtube video that happened to catch an audio clip in the background. I spend more than a meal or hour of minimum wage on a single album or movie screening. Oh... and I'm NOT an American. I am Canadian.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
The day it becomes apparent to most users that google is manipulating results is the day a new search engine will take over. Let's not forget how google got so popular to begin with: they had the most relevant search results around. Water this down and they lose value. They're not invincible and their future is by no means guaranteed. Ain't that right AOL?
...that Google realizes this is just a complete waste of time and put a couple of interns on it, so they could get the RIAA to stop calling them day and night.
Wouldn;t it be cheaper to buy some auto-response systems and put them in the "RIAA support lines" with the message of "Your call is important to us. An operator will be with you as soon as possible (a.k.a never). Please hold and jerk off"?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
They left out piratebay.se
It doesn't matter. I and millions of people use google to FIND what WE want,
not what the RIAA wants us to find.
Hey RIAA, like the first response says - fuck off.
E
It's to their users... no doubt their idea of "piracy" includes fair use content as well... observe how they list Youtube as separate from "authorized"....
They list mere counts of average number of times a site appeared that had 10,000 or more removal requests, or 1,000 or more remove requests.
Out of millions of remove requests received by Google; 10,000 pages at issue on a large site do not necessarily qualify as "a large number of requests".
RIAA's arguments are non-constructive, and they have offered no evidence that Google has not taken successful action to demote piracy results.
If I google for "name of song/movie torrent" then the legit MAFIAA versions are hardly going to be in the top 10.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/ Google produces a report that includes a breakdown of all requests Google has received since July 2011 to remove copyright-infringing content from its search index. Google updates the information daily.
Perhaps Google, like many an adult, dislikes being ordered about by spoiled children.
Make that spoiled, sanctimonious, amoral, dishonest, hypocritical, mentally skewed, ethically bereft children.
Poor babies.
John Eadie [JE46] http://www.c-art.com `one of these days the dogs aren't going to eat the dog food' - Bill Joy
Ever since RIAA realized they can sue grandmothers for millions and people with open WIFI access points, they've gotten super sue happy. The bar down the street got sued for $100,000 for doing karaoke. I mean everyone is getting sued. The radio stations online are sued to do tribute. The Canadian government got influenced so they impose taxes on CDs to give tribute to RIAA. RIAA probably realizes there is more money to be had in suing people than actually producing something now since everything goes in their favor. Now they're weighing up a big whale and seeing if they can take it sounds like it. Someone needs to stop the RIAA, they ruin lives because they're just plain greedy and have no morals to stop them. They started with screwing artists, now they're trying to sue everyone possible. It's just sick.
God spoke to me
maybe the suits at RIAA are getting personalized results, just like everyone else.
think about it - if all they click on are pirate sites, that's going to fairly effectively override any pagerank tweaks that google can throw at them.
a RIAA lawyer is hardly going to click on spotify, hulu or itunes if they're looking to C&D someone.
'These sites consistently appear at the top of Google's search results for popular songs or artists.'
Lets search for "The Big Bang Theory S06E17 720p download". Hm, only pirate sites. Why would that be? Maybe because there are no legal Sites to appear.
The real Problem is, that at the time people search for popular downloads of Music/Movies and Television shows, there are no legal alternatives to pirate sites. At least outside the US. Sure in 2 Years you might find it on a legal Streaming site or buy the DVD/Bluray half Season box, but today? Piracy is your only Option.
It's more than this. The very fact that sites have been subject to a large number of takedown notices and position highly on lists of them attracts legitimate searches, traffic, news reporting, and links to those sites resulting in the search engine version of the Streisand effect and bumping them up the rankings...
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Validation process:
1. Visit website
2. Infringing content or just a bunch of links to files refering to what may be infringing content?
3. Stamp 'invalid'.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones They even get the ads on the pirate site right.
That, and if you wanted to download a song, who doesn't know you go to amazon or itunes? I don't think anyone is "searching" for legitimate downloads. It is in your face were legitimate downloads are.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
But you put "free" in your search. What happens if you put "buy" instead. Someone putting free in there on purpose is not looking to buy.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
People are using google to find their way to sites like google.com and facebook.com. Using the searchbar to find a legal download of a album is not so far fetched.
Ok, fair point. There are some rocks in this world.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
The RIAA can fuck off.
A search engine is supposed to search and display what it finds. I'll be the one to do the filtering
You are half right. (100% right about the RIAA, btw, but only half right about search engines.) A search engine is a content delivery service, period. It is supposed to generate profit by delivering search results, the same way Netflix/Unbox/Hulu generates profit by delivering movies and TV shows. The minute you let your customers control their end of the delivery pipeline is the minute you've lost control of your business model and can start kissing your profits good-bye. Google makes money by selling advertising content mixed in with those search results -- if Google allowed you to arbitrarily filter those search results, companies would stop paying Google to insert their ads into your search result stream. End-to-end control of the delivery pipeline is absolutely necessary in this business model. The entertainment industry learned this the hard way, when their customers discovered they could get the same content via the simple expedient of finding somebody (hello, Google!) who had a copy of the content they wanted. This is the single most important lesson to be learned about content delivery via the net. Information may want to be free, but in order to make a profit on it, you have to constrain it by making it available only to those people who can pay for it, and you can only do that by making certain that your customers can't go elsewhere for it, which is what the entertainment industry epically failed to do (an error that it is fighting desperately, via the loathsome RIAA and MPAA, to correct.) If Google loses control of their delivery pipeline, which is what you are advocating, then their business model is doomed.
Last August, Google indicated that it would start lowering the search-result rankings of Websites with high numbers of 'valid' copyright removal notices. 'This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it's a song previewed on NPR's music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed on Spotify,' Amit Singhal, Google's senior vice president of Engineering, wrote in a corporate blog posting at the time.
Maybe it's just that even after demotion, the pirate sites are still the best possible result, ranking above the sites that the RIAA would like to see at the top...
And even if, it certainly is none of YOUR country's business whether it's legal in mine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do what I did with annoying callers, forward them to the fax machine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
it's not google's business model to do the bidding of the RIAA. they can bite me.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Huh? They make money off those sites right? What difference does it make if they make money of other sites as well?
And they should get paid -- hence the 5% fee they should get to keep.