Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Wipes 786 Pirate Sites From Search Results (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the wipe-the-floor dept.

Google and several leading Russian search engines have completely wiped 786 "pirate" sites from their search results. That's according to telecoms watch Rozcomnadzor, which reports that the search providers delisted the sites after ISPs were ordered by a Moscow court to permanently block them. TorrentFreak reports: Late July, President Vladimir Putin signed a new law which requires local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor to maintain a list of banned domains while identifying sites, services, and software that provide access to them. [...] Nevertheless, on October 1 the new law ("On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection") came into effect and it appears that Russia's major search engines have been very busy in its wake. According to a report from Rozcomnadzor, search providers Google, Yandex, Mail.ru, Rambler, and Sputnik have stopped presenting information in results for sites that have been permanently blocked by ISPs following a decision by the Moscow City Court. "To date, search engines have stopped access to 786 pirate sites listed in the register of Internet resources which contain content distributed in violation of intellectual property rights," the watchdog reports. The domains aren't being named by Rozcomnadzor or the search engines but are almost definitely those sites that have had complaints filed against them at the City Court on multiple occasions but have failed to take remedial action. Also included will be mirror and proxy sites which either replicate or facilitate access to these blocked and apparently defiant domains.

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. I should remove these from my index too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I should remove these from my index too. I need a list of the sites I have to remove.

    1. Re:I should remove these from my index too by quenda · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I do a naughty search on google, I get:

      we have removed 6 results from this page.
        If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaints that caused the removals at LumenDatabase.org

      followed by a bunch of links to pages at Lumen, full of pirate URLs . What a resource! They should call it PirateDatabase.org.
      Thanks Warner Bros etc for doing the hard work of finding the good pirate sites for me.

      Somebody should write a simple search engine that just returns links from DMCA complaints within LumenDatabase.org

  2. Helpless Without Google by FrankHaynes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was amused to learn a while back that some people simply are incapable of typing a domain name into a browser's URL field. They only know how to search for everything via Google.

    I was at a friend's house one day talking about going to a baseball game. I told him to go to nationals.com to see where good seats remained. He dutifully opened up google.com and typed "nationals.com" into the search bar. No, I am not kidding.

    So this kind of restriction actually has much greater impact than it first might seem.

    --
    slashdot: A failed experiment.
    1. Re:Helpless Without Google by crow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yup. Also, it saves you from going to the wrong site if your typing is less than perfect. Google is usually smart enough to find the site you wanted despite most common typos instead of taking you to some typo squatter site.

    2. Re:Helpless Without Google by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

      Same reason women have fat friends, so they're the skinny one.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. It also sets a dngerous precedent by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google removing domains from search results can and will be a tool of other kinds of legal censorship, including political censorship. "Pirate sites" is not necessarily a well defined term. Is some of the material on those sites content that engages in satire, or other forms of fair use? Or has there been a rubber stamp of "piracy" for hosting content that is, even on casual review legal? Will a government or private "anti-piracy" agency review sites, hunt for a captured or quoted article, and get it pulled from Google search results under the guise of "anti-piracy"

    Such censorship has certainly occurred on Youtube, which Google owns, and for Google mentioned search results. I'm concerned that Google is losing, if it ever had, the ability to refuse censorship requests.