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Publisher Is Pretty Sure Google Could End Piracy (techdirt.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-keep-using-that-word dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Techdirt is running a story about Square One Publishers Rudy Shur, and his confusion over the DMCA process, and exactly what Google has control over. The story goes: "After being contacted by Google Play with an offer to join the team, Shur took it upon himself to fire off an angry email in response. That would have been fine, but he somehow convinced Publisher's Weekly to print both the letter and some additional commentary. Presumably, his position at a publishing house outweighed Publisher Weekly's better judgment, because everything about his email/commentary is not just wrong, but breathtakingly so.

After turning down the offer to join Google Play (Shur's previous participation hadn't really shown it to be an advantageous relationship), Shur decided to play internet detective. Starting with this paragraph, Shur's arguments head downhill then off a cliff then burst into flames then the flaming wreckage slides down another hill and off another cliff. (h/t The Digital Reader) '[W]e did discover, however, was that Google has no problem allowing other e-book websites to illegally offer a number of our e-book titles, either free or at reduced rates, to anyone on the Internet.'

There's a huge difference between "allowing" and "things that happen concurrently with Google's existence." Shur cannot recognize this difference, which is why he's so shocked Google won't immediately fix it. 'When we alerted Google, all we got back was an email telling us that Google has no responsibility and that it is up to us to contact these sites to tell them to stop giving away or selling our titles.'"

24 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. The elders of the internet by fieldstone · · Score: 5, Funny

    But the Google is emperor of the internet! Everynoob knows this to be true.

    1. Re:The elders of the internet by wisnoskij · · Score: 2

      I think I heard that they already do dowrank piracy. You get results when you are obviously searching for piracy, but otherwise you don't. Example: Typing in, simply, a movie title will never get you piracy results.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    2. Re:The elders of the internet by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They can do a good job on spam because there's generally consensus about what spam is, and when people see spam they're willing to click on a button that notifies Google that it's spam. This lets them train machine learning algorithms to identify it. That's not the case for piracy - people aren't going to click on a 'this site hosts pirated content' button next to search results. The people who are looking for it wouldn't want it to go away, most other people don't see it, and there's a huge potential for abuse (if such a button existed, I bet a lot of us would click on it for sony.com and so on).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:The elders of the internet by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But Google has a financial incentive not to. Why? Because people want to see the pages that give them free stuff. DUH. And if Google doesn't give them, they will turn away from Google and to the next search engine. And that is certainly the LAST thing Google would want.

      And I would not rely on law makers to step in here. Because their incentive to have US businesses lose business to foreign ones isn't too high either. Because people can VERY easily jump ship on this one. If the word gets out that Google doesn't give you the results you're looking for anymore and, say, Yandex does, well, to hell with the US, hello Russia.

      Why should real people care more about the country they live in than corporations?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:The elders of the internet by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Funny

      If Google can't control what people post on the Internet, Bill Gates should be able to block them from the Internet entirely. This guy should talk to Bill Gates, and say that Donald Trump sent him!

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    5. Re:The elders of the internet by Dins · · Score: 2

      Besides, that's a good way for Google to eventually work its way into irrelevancy. Once people find out that they can't use Google to find what they're looking for, they might be tempted to try other search engines (*cough* Duck Duck Go *cough). That movement would start out as very small and insignificant but if it persisted, especially with kids and teens, word of mouth alone could seriously cut into Google's user base. A situation I'm sure they're aware of and trying to dance around.

      This is already happening to an extent with Facebook. I'm the father of a 17 year old boy. He and his friends would never touch Facebook with a 10 foot pole (that's my boy! :)

  2. What in the fuck? by ravenspear · · Score: 5, Informative

    Could someone explain the summary in plain English?

    It sounds like something bad happened to someone important but other than that I have absolutely no idea what it is saying.

    1. Re:What in the fuck? by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Informative

      Could someone explain the summary in plain English?

      Crybaby publisher is scapegoating Google for for unauthorized distribution of works.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:What in the fuck? by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Informative

      From what I can gather: publisher is asked by Google if they want to put their books on Google Play. Publisher head refuses, does "detective work" and suddenly arrives in the 21st century, realizing that there are many pirate sites hosting their books. Since the guy used Google to reach those pirate sites, he comes to the conclusion that Google is doing the piracy.

      The TL;DR of the summary of the rant is that somebody in a tiny position of power doesn't understand the internet.

    3. Re:What in the fuck? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      tl;dr version: Some old geezer mistook the service that distributes street numbers for the guys running the crack house.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re: What in the fuck? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is one point in the DMCA claim that is given under penalty of perjury: The submitter of the claim must attest that they are the copyright holder, or empowered to act on behalf of the copyright holder, of the work in question. That part of the claim is given under penalty of perjury.

      There is, though, no requirement that the rest of the claim be accurate. This is intentional: It was expected from the very beginning that some level of automation would be required, so there was always the risk infringement would be mistakenly identified and a takedown sent where no infringement actually took place. That's why the counternotice procedure is also included. The sheer scale on which the DMCA would eventually be used was not anticipated though. The internet was a small place in 1998.

    5. Re:What in the fuck? by Daemonik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Could someone explain the summary in plain English?

      It sounds like something bad happened to someone important but other than that I have absolutely no idea what it is saying.

      Well, your initial supposition is wrong first off. Some guy who thinks he's important blames Google for the actions of people that are not under their control. It's like blaming crowbar manufacturers for people using crowbars to break into houses.

      His business model is unable to adjust to the fact that his product is easily pirated, and he's blaming the most visible company connected to the Internet for other people pirating his works, without taking into account Google has no control over anyone but themselves, they are not the only search engine in the world, they only index the WWW portion of the Internet which has many other protocols that files can be shared over. He's tilting at windmills.

    6. Re:What in the fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > it's clear that he does in fact understand Google's role.

      No, he clearly doesn't, and your quote only reinforces that.

      Google's role in this is akin to the Yellow Pages. Let's say "A1 American Pawn" has an ad in the Yellow Pages (first listing, in fact) and they are caught selling some of this guy's stolen stuff. They sold a lot of stolen stuff and bought a bigger ad.

      If this guy told the Yellow Pages they had a responsibility to remove this guy's ad, reduce the size of it, move it farther down the listings, or compensate him for the value of the stolen stuff, they'd be perfectly justified in telling him to fuck off. It's between him, A1 Pawn, and the police.

  3. Liability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've to say, with Square One Titles on Health like Cancer: A Second Opinion, I can only presume that Rudy Shur believes that Square One should be, by extension, guilty of any wrongful death suit that occurs by following the advice given in the books that delay treatments that might otherwise save lives. Because as a publisher of such material, Square One is under a lot more control over what goes into the books they publish that Google has on what content is published by others, even if they're admittedly less than dutiful when it comes to preemptively scrubbing ilegally copyrighted material from the web or otherwise investigating and responding to publisher allegations of such things.

    I mean, seriously, do you really want to be casting stones?

    1. Re:Liability by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We should start contacting the pirates too and making sure they know not to distribute this trash. It doesn't deserve to be read at all.

  4. Google is the internet! by thephydes · · Score: 2

    Just like IE was the internet when it had dominant browser share . Yeah right!

  5. Summarize The Article by wisnoskij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just summarize the article. We don't need to be told what to think by some anon

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
  6. Re:somebody wants to defend google? by khasim · · Score: 2

    publisher may be making weak (rather than wrong) argument, ...

    No. It is wrong. Completely wrong. Google has nothing to do with other companies that are violating copyrights.

    ... but anyone defending almighty goog ... is simply wrong.

    And no one is defending Google. That is because Google is not involved as he claims they are.

    Here's an example for you:
    If you license Amalgamated Alice to distribute your product ...
    But then you find Bob's Basement Bargains is distributing a copy of your product ...
    Alice is not responsible for Bob's actions.

    If you have a problem with Bob then you take it up with Bob. Do not claim that Alice should do something about it.

  7. Re:somebody wants to defend google? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    Even the worst serial killer is absolutely entitled to being defended if accused wrongly. And Google is accused wrongly in this case. Yes, a lot of what they do is despicable and worth of contempt. But that does not mean that it's ok to just bash them at any occasion.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Oh for chrissakes... by Chas · · Score: 5, Informative

    1: Google cannot make demands of third party sites to cease selling/distributing (POSSIBLY) copyrighted works.

    First off, Google itself, unless it's the actual publisher/author of record, has no standing to make such a demand (request actually).

    Second off, Google has NO way of knowing what other ebook sites have coterminous agreements with a given publisher or author.

    This is why it's up to the publisher/author to submit DMCA requests to the proper channels. And Google itself isn't a proper channel!

    2: This idiot tries to compare it to a store selling knockoff handbags.

    First off, these are ebooks, not handbags.

    Second off, Google is not "the police" of the Internet. They have no legal standing to do go in and shut these sites down. ESPECIALLY since they have no way of knowing if such a thing would interfere with another distributor's agreements with the publisher/author.

    3: Google has no problem going after people who infringe on their own patents.

    That's because they're GOOGLE'S patents.

    What this imbecile is asking for would be like Google going after you for violating Lockheed Martin's patents.

    For someone who is an ostensibly successful publisher, this person shows a SHOCKING lack of knowledge of one of the central legal protections available to him for internet distribution. And it calls into question what other mistaken notions this ignoramus is operating under.

    Oh! And now he's just jumped into a large, bright red crosshairs costume and strapped on a blinking neon "Kick Me" sign.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  9. Re:Presumption of innocence rules by NormalVisual · · Score: 2

    The DMCA take down requests need to be sent the sites hosting the content, not to Google.

    Wait 'till he finds out that his stuff is being hosted overseas, and that the DMCA doesn't apply outside the United States.

    --
    Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  10. Take a few deep breaths first by ITRambo · · Score: 2

    I know that whenever I get angry and want to, or do, spout all sorts of nasty things verbally, that it never results in a better outcome than keeping a cool head would have. This guy hasn't yet learned to bite his tongue in cases where emotion has beaten the crap out of logic. If your subconscious whispers "I shouldn't say this", then don't. Just accept that copyright infringement, in this case, is not Google's problem as they're playing by the rules, or so it appears, in this case.

  11. Why are pirates bothering with their crap? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

    An earlier commenter pointed out that Square One publishes some books of medical lies, peddling false cancer cures and the like, but check this out:
    http://www.squareonepublishers...
    http://www.squareonepublishers...
    http://www.squareonepublishers...

    This is a publisher of lies and woo. They do not deserve to be pirated. They do not deserve to be read. They do not even deserve to be acknowledged, except for purposes of mockery.

  12. Re:Is that the new Netiquette? by RDW · · Score: 3, Informative

    Get a job offer, respond angrily for no reason in particular and start harrassing the company who offered the job?

    There was no job offer - 'join the team' is poor phrasing from Tim Cushing at Techdirt, in an article that's more distorted and melodramatic than the piece he's complaining about (which doesn't seem particularly angry). The publisher was approached by Google about selling their books via Play. The publisher declined, and pointed out that Google was at the same time making a profit from linking to pirated copies of the publisher's books in its search results. The publisher doesn't seem terribly well informed about how this whole Internet thing operates, but Techdirt's hyperventilating clickbait isn't exactly a model of clarity and accuracy either.