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Disney Patents a Piracy Free Search Engine
wabrandsma writes with this excerpt from Torrentfreak: Disney has just obtained a patent for a search engine that ranks sites based on various "authenticity" factors. One of the goals of the technology is to filter pirated material from search results while boosting the profile of copyright and trademark holders' websites. A new patent awarded to Disney Enterprises this week describes a search engine through which pirated content is hard to find. Titled "Online content ranking system based on authenticity metric values for web elements," one of the patent's main goals is to prevent pirated movies and other illicit content from ranking well in the search results. According to Disney their patent makes it possible to "enable the filtering of undesirable search results, such as results referencing piracy websites." Disney believes that current search engines are using the wrong approach as they rely on a website's "popularity." This allows site owners to game the system in order to rank higher. "For example, a manipulated page for unauthorized sales of drugs, movies, etc. might be able to obtain a high popularity rating, but what the typical user will want to see is a more authentic page," they explain. Probably not a good place to look for a grey-market copy of Song of the South.
... they *don't* want other search engines to use this?
Or are they planning to somehow force search engines to license the process?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I'm sure this "invention" will correctly attribute Snow White to Brothers Grimm and not Disney. Right?
I refuse to use
Use this as a plugin to a real search engine to identify and strip out the sites that they are promoting as "legit" :-)
They design a search engine that implements their wet dream for them and then because they are what they are, they make sure nobody will use it by slapping a patent on it! They are their own worst enemy!
If you don't know how it works, it's only because you haven't bothered to look it up.
Not exactly. You only know how PageRank worked at the very beginning, when it was patented. That is far from "the" Google search algorithm these days. It remains one of the most important ones, and possibly one that's fundamental to how Google's whole search engine works, but they have many, many other algorithms that govern search results today. Most of these are not patented, mainly for the reasons mentioned earlier: If Google patented them, it would have to disclose how they work. Instead, they maintain them as trade secrets, like the formula for Coca-Cola.
In Disney's case, I think it's not really interested in competing with Google. It would much rather Google, Bing, etc look at its patent, say "OK, I can do that if it will get Disney off my back" and implement the patent for little-to-no royalty fees.
Breakfast served all day!
I don't want to question too much the validity of this patent. I'm just glad that a corrupt organization like Disney got the patent. That way other search engines will think twice and not risk implementing any sort of "authenticity" factors" in their searches. So Disney can go ahead and have searches that favor Disney in their own search engine, but will have to avoid doing that. Great move Disney. What other things that would have favored you are you going to patent so that others can't do?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They are patenting it, not implementing it. This way no one else can implement it.