An anonymous statement holds no weight and thus cannot be defamatory. At least, not enough to rise to the level of court intervention.
Surely it must conceivably be possible that someone may say something on an anonymous forum that people will take to be the truth, yet is totally unfair and does severe damage to someone's reputation. I doubt typical forum posts have this level of weight behind them.
But there should be a prima-facie argument that they are defamatory first. The plaintiff must be required to show harm has been done and that the post is untrue.
Nothing from Id? Carmack pretty much invented the FPS! Every FPS owes something to Wolf3D! No Elite; possibly the first simulator. Where's Adventure in that list?
Okay - perhaps we're only looking at console games (Which makes Tetris a bit of an oddity). Grand Theft Auto gets three mentions, but GTA 3 isn't one of them. VC and SA may have been improvements but they weren't more influential. Outrun 2 but no outrun? Why is Pokemon all the way down at 26 and Guitar Hero at 27? Where's Singstar, and anything for Sony's EyeToy? Can you really say these haven't influenced gaming?
Are they using a meaning of "influential" that I've not heard before, or are these "industry experts" all 14 year olds?
Worse than going down for possessing child pornography?
That's the third option. He can reveal his password (and get found guilty of child porn), refuse to (and be guilty of contempt of court or obstruction of justice or something), or lie (and be guilty of perjury). Given these options, refusal is his best choice. And of course, there's still a potential for an appeal on fifth amendment grounds.
That would presumably be perjury. You might get away with it but really it's not something you want to be charged for. Perjury has pretty stiff penalties. Refusal to provide the key will be, at worst, contempt of court, which, I believe, has a much lighter penalty.
Cross examination: Do you have this threat in writing? Did anyone else hear it? I put it to the court that you fabricated this excuse to leave early due to your growing irrational dislike for you employer. Could you not have talked to HR about this alleged threat
Courts don't use a simple question and answer format. Lawyers are very skilled at making innocent decisions seem like a conspiracy. They're actually pretty smart people. They can make the question a lot more awkward than I can.
Tit-for-tat is satisfying but it's probably better in the long-term to be the professional here. If he does get a negative reference, and sues for libel, it will look a lot better for him if he gave fair notice than if he just left. At the very least there will be no awkward questions about why he didn't work his notice.
can we admit his 8th amendment rights were stomped and pissed-upon by the 5 million dollar bail requirement?
I think that the "Excessive bail shall not be required," part of the 8th Amendment has been comprehensively stomped on for some years now. The fact that the majority of people need to effectively take out a high interest loan to pay bail makes a mockery of the system.
So put the blame where it belongs: prosecute the person who originally made the torrent available, since he/she is the only person who knowingly posted the content and can attest for his/her (un)authorization to do so.
But what about the people who knowingly assisted?
Oh wait. I have this file on my hard disk named "core".
As do lots of other people. It's therefore not all that likely that it's a copy of that particular copyrighted work. Does this make it more likely that the torrent of "Confessions of a Shopaholic" is not infringing copyright? Does your computer often do a confessionsofashopaholicdump?
What if I write an essay about my personal drama as a shopaholic and publish it online?
Then it would not be an infringing file. It doesn't seem all that reasonable to assume that that's what the uploaded file is simply because it's conceivable. Have you done this?
50:1 odds are no acceptable grounds to convict anyone (nor can you really derive such a number realistically). There is reasonable doubt and the particular situation should be investigated instead of assuming guilt.
I'm asking what you believe. Proving beyond reasonable doubt is a task for lawyers with access to all the evidence. It's the difference between getting away with it and being not guilty.
And you throw the other 10% out with the baby water, because you think the lazy attitude of outlawing Bittorrent completely is socially more acceptable than verifying copyright infringement claims on an individual basis.
We're talking about outlawing The Pirate Bay. If they can't offer a service without so much piracy perhaps they ought to consider a different service. We regulate other industries that have the potential to cause harm. Perhaps copyright infringement is harmless and should be legalised, but that's another argument at the moment the law assumes harm is being done.
Then do as someone else said: do not ever open a web page again, because it might contain some copyrighted content --- and you'll never know about it until the bits are already in your RAM!
But it's not all that likely. It's several orders of magnitude less likely to be infringing copyright. It's not something that a reasonable man would expect to be able to determine with any sort of accuracy.
By the way: law indeed has a concept of "knowing". That's why you distinguish between murder and manslaughter, to give the most obvious example. If the prosecution can prove that you fully understood the implications of your actions that led to someone's death (as opposed to an unpremeditated accident), you'll get a harsher sentence.
This is my point TPB know the consequences of their actions.
I think TPB's defence relies on the assumption that a machine (torrent tracker) cannot decide whether some content is okay to redistribute or not. The people who made the content available can, so if you want to prosecute anyone, you should prosecute them.
And the prosecution will use the same point to argue that since the machine can't, it's up to the administrators to make at least some token effort to make this decision.
Throw up a torrent with 500 pornographic pics of yourself? that's 500 legitimate files.
Excellent point. Can't think of an argument right now:) I still think that TPB was set up with the primary purpose of distributing copyrighted mainstream media (i.e. Hollywood movies, popular music and TV shows). What I think and what a legal expert can prove to a court are completely different things, of course.
And you know what? It wouldn't matter even a little bit if 90% of the sites returned by your local DNS server were hosting illegal content because the rest of us aren't willing to lose the other 10% just because idiots like you want an easy target.
No. But TPB is doing more than hosting DNS. They're also doing less than distributing files. A DNS entry is content agnostic. Change the website, the DNS entry stays the same. Unless they URL infringes copyright I can;t see an argument for a DNS entry to be infringing. Torrent files in general are content agnostic but a single specific file is very specific about purpose.
More importantly though, the point is intent. Are we talking about a service that is designed to resolve DNS for pirate sites and only offers legitimate use to those 10% as a side effect?
Exactly my point, neither can TPB, anything that deals with publicly provided content, has that same problem,
TPB could make a token effort. If there's a specific complaint, and pretty compelling evidence, they could remove the tracker. They refuse to do so. Youtube removes content when requested. I believe the others do as well.
Show me one, with public (non-specific, ie: not just Linux OS's, etc) uploading, free sign-up (or none), that actually has content people want, that doesn't have illegal content on it.
People want to pirate stuff so I can't.
There again, the same can be said about TCP/UDP packets, DNS cache's, or even your browser's cache folder. Just because they can do it, doesn't mean that the user is using it for that purpose.
Yes, and the specific ones that are used for infringing copyright are also infringing copyright. A TCP IP packet containing a section of copyrighted file has no purpose other than to distribute that section of that copyrighted file. As such the specific packets may well be infringing. Not all. Just those ones. Just like not all torrent files or servers are infringing. Just some of them.
Name me one file that is not in some way copyrighted.
That's being pedantic.
My meaning was distributing files that do not have the copyright holder's permission to distribute.
there is no possible way for anyone to differentiate such content with anything non-copyrighted without knowing: who made it, where they made it, who holds the copyright for it, who posted it, where the poster got it, where it's posted, where it was posted from, and whether or not is was posted with the intent to distribute by the copyright holder.
I think it's pretty obvious that "Confessions of a Shopaholic" is not being distributed with the copyright holder's permission. I'll quite happily give you odds of 50:1 on it if you want to put money on it.
Once again, we have to assume extreme stupidity to believe that 90% of the content on TPB is distributed with the owners permission.
The ability to post a response while including a part of an originating comment is, itself, a form of copyright violation. It may be a protected form of it,
That's not a copyright violation. Violation means to violate the exclusive rights someone has over copyrighted material without permission. Slashdot gives me implicit permission to download and read their content. I can quote you because fair use isn't copyright violation.
The answer to this is the same as the answer to the following question: Is there any significant legal use for a link to a piece of information you can't confirm the copyright status of prior to following the link? If your answer to that question is "no", then you should quickly close your web browser and pretend you've never heard of the Internet for all the good your current opinion will do you.
But once again, we have to assume impressive stupidity on the part of everyone for not realising the extremely high probability that it's illegal.
In law, there's the concept of "knew or should have known". Maybe the copyright holder on an obscure low budget animation is hard to determine but a yopu can't make the same claim for a major motion picture, whose owners have contacted you explicitly to let you know that they have not given permission for the distribution of the file.
So ultimately TPB's defence relies on a genuine belief that people are making high budget movies and giving them away for free.
It's to facilitate communication between people for whatever reason they choose.
Seriously?
Oh come on!
Do you really believe that The Pirate Bay was set up for any purpose other than distributing copyrighted files? Do you think they decided they'd set up a torrent server because people want creative commons licensed videos and legally redistributable software? Do you really think that it's just a coincidence that they chose a name that is so strongly linked with unauthorised distribution?
Are you extremely gullible. Have you been lying to justify it so long that you've started to believe your own lies?
is there any significant legal use for a torrent of an non infringing file?
Yes. But what does that have to do with anything? TPB is knowingly hosting content that has no plausible legal use. Yes, they also host some legal content. The Pirate bay serves torrents for some legal content. Also, prohibition era speakeasies offered some legal drinks, people who speed also often drive under the speed limit, and pirates buy some legal content. I'm really not sure where you're going with this. Did you fail to understand my argument? You didn't answer my question, you just asked another.
So, is there any significant legal use for a torrent of an infringing file?
They are just a middle-man, and one that resides in numerous countries all with differing laws,
This just means they have to abide by the laws in all the countries.
For the most part, (to me anyways) it's the same as suing ISP's for distributing illegal content, suing Cat5 cable makers for allowing it, suing hard drive makers for storing it... etc etc...
I see a difference. ISPs don't exist to allow copyright infringement. Hard drive manufacturers don't produce a product solely to store copyright infringing material. Cat 5 cable manufacturers don't make cable with the intention to transfer illegal files. They know it will happen but they can't really do much about it without causing problems for legitimate users.
TPB exists to facilitate copyright infringement. Now, to prove that to a reasonable standard for the courts is up to the prosecution, but I think it's pretty self evident that they would prefer to have the illegal content than not. Those files that have had specific complaints made about them could easily have been removed. It seems obvious, given that there are many sites that do only legal torrents, that removing the illegal ones would not be impossible.
even entirely legitimate/scrutinized torrent servers, still sometimes have "illegal" content on them, just like (whatever company that was) that distributed some illegal (or weren't 'allowed' to distribute) content, by accident... for now "that's ok, you tried"... but when they are the only ones left, they become the new target... then even accidental distribution is a crime...
While it is true that some occasional files will be infringing material, there's a difference between "some occasional" and the "vast majority". This is a slippery slope argument.
I'm not even sure that they can be described as "just" middle men. A torrent file and tracker is more than a collection of links. It's a computer readable set of instructions giving detailed information on exactly what needs to be transferred from where, for the sole purpose of transferring data between computers.
If you stay with a friend you may use their landline. This will allow the abusive spouse to work out which friend quite easily.
You don't want to encourage vulnerable women (or even vulnerable men) to use public phones.
No argument there.
Honestly, I think your last point outweighs all the others quite considerably. I'm surprised that children are permitted to stay with an alleged violent person, or that the victim didn't take the children when fleeing.
The problem is serious, because domestic violence victims who've fled an abusive relationship often have to stay in contact with their abuser by phone, particularly in situations where the former couple share custody of their children," Southworth says.
Trouble is, if all your friends are on Facebook, it's difficult to persuade them all to go elsewhere. Especially because they have to persuade all their friends and they'll have to persuade their friends...
I don't need to. I just need to show that it was reasonable for me to assume that I'm authorised to do so.
Nobody has made a complaint about the copyright infringement of these websites. The same information doesn't appear to be available elsewhere. None of them contain information that obviously infringes copyright.
I have a problem with lack of anonymity combined with the internet potentially keeping a permanent record of everything I ever say. I don't use my real name on usenet because I might say something that I will be embarrassed about in the future. I feel that would be unfair to future me. Any medium that won't be logged, and I'm happy to provide full information about who I am. As for the usenet alias, the only untruth is the name. I'm honest about my date of birth, where I live, educational background, and the fact that the name is an alias.
Morally, I'd say Google's executives are obligated to do what's best for the company. Legally this is exactly the case. Now, if this was a paper mill, perhaps shareholders would be happy to just have a chunk of the revenue. In this case, shareholders were most likely aware that Google would want to expand into other markets, and this was one of the factors that increased their desire to invest in the company.
Google is in a better position to exploit internet based technology than individual shareholders. They have a strong brand name and will get a certain amount of free publicity through Google's current popularity in technological circles.
Slashdot Mirror
An anonymous statement holds no weight and thus cannot be defamatory. At least, not enough to rise to the level of court intervention.
Surely it must conceivably be possible that someone may say something on an anonymous forum that people will take to be the truth, yet is totally unfair and does severe damage to someone's reputation. I doubt typical forum posts have this level of weight behind them.
But there should be a prima-facie argument that they are defamatory first. The plaintiff must be required to show harm has been done and that the post is untrue.
I really have to wonder what sort of carrot the manufacturers use to encourage developers to develop for their platform, pre-release.
It has to be a pretty big risk. It's possible that the console is barely going to sell at all.
No. No, we didn't screw up in our design or our developer tools. We meant to do it that way!
A Sony spokesman has said something similar before about the PSP's sticky buttons.
Is this something about Sony's culture or maybe Japanese culture in general?
Nothing from Id? Carmack pretty much invented the FPS! Every FPS owes something to Wolf3D! No Elite; possibly the first simulator. Where's Adventure in that list?
Okay - perhaps we're only looking at console games (Which makes Tetris a bit of an oddity). Grand Theft Auto gets three mentions, but GTA 3 isn't one of them. VC and SA may have been improvements but they weren't more influential. Outrun 2 but no outrun? Why is Pokemon all the way down at 26 and Guitar Hero at 27? Where's Singstar, and anything for Sony's EyeToy? Can you really say these haven't influenced gaming?
Are they using a meaning of "influential" that I've not heard before, or are these "industry experts" all 14 year olds?
Worse than going down for possessing child pornography?
That's the third option. He can reveal his password (and get found guilty of child porn), refuse to (and be guilty of contempt of court or obstruction of justice or something), or lie (and be guilty of perjury). Given these options, refusal is his best choice. And of course, there's still a potential for an appeal on fifth amendment grounds.
That would presumably be perjury. You might get away with it but really it's not something you want to be charged for. Perjury has pretty stiff penalties. Refusal to provide the key will be, at worst, contempt of court, which, I believe, has a much lighter penalty.
Cross examination: Do you have this threat in writing? Did anyone else hear it? I put it to the court that you fabricated this excuse to leave early due to your growing irrational dislike for you employer. Could you not have talked to HR about this alleged threat
Courts don't use a simple question and answer format. Lawyers are very skilled at making innocent decisions seem like a conspiracy. They're actually pretty smart people. They can make the question a lot more awkward than I can.
Disagree.
Tit-for-tat is satisfying but it's probably better in the long-term to be the professional here. If he does get a negative reference, and sues for libel, it will look a lot better for him if he gave fair notice than if he just left. At the very least there will be no awkward questions about why he didn't work his notice.
can we admit his 8th amendment rights were stomped and pissed-upon by the 5 million dollar bail requirement?
I think that the "Excessive bail shall not be required," part of the 8th Amendment has been comprehensively stomped on for some years now. The fact that the majority of people need to effectively take out a high interest loan to pay bail makes a mockery of the system.
So put the blame where it belongs: prosecute the person who originally made the torrent available, since he/she is the only person who knowingly posted the content and can attest for his/her (un)authorization to do so.
But what about the people who knowingly assisted?
Oh wait. I have this file on my hard disk named "core".
As do lots of other people. It's therefore not all that likely that it's a copy of that particular copyrighted work. Does this make it more likely that the torrent of "Confessions of a Shopaholic" is not infringing copyright? Does your computer often do a confessionsofashopaholicdump?
What if I write an essay about my personal drama as a shopaholic and publish it online?
Then it would not be an infringing file. It doesn't seem all that reasonable to assume that that's what the uploaded file is simply because it's conceivable. Have you done this?
50:1 odds are no acceptable grounds to convict anyone (nor can you really derive such a number realistically). There is reasonable doubt and the particular situation should be investigated instead of assuming guilt.
I'm asking what you believe. Proving beyond reasonable doubt is a task for lawyers with access to all the evidence. It's the difference between getting away with it and being not guilty.
And you throw the other 10% out with the baby water, because you think the lazy attitude of outlawing Bittorrent completely is socially more acceptable than verifying copyright infringement claims on an individual basis.
We're talking about outlawing The Pirate Bay. If they can't offer a service without so much piracy perhaps they ought to consider a different service. We regulate other industries that have the potential to cause harm. Perhaps copyright infringement is harmless and should be legalised, but that's another argument at the moment the law assumes harm is being done.
Then do as someone else said: do not ever open a web page again, because it might contain some copyrighted content --- and you'll never know about it until the bits are already in your RAM!
But it's not all that likely. It's several orders of magnitude less likely to be infringing copyright. It's not something that a reasonable man would expect to be able to determine with any sort of accuracy.
By the way: law indeed has a concept of "knowing". That's why you distinguish between murder and manslaughter, to give the most obvious example. If the prosecution can prove that you fully understood the implications of your actions that led to someone's death (as opposed to an unpremeditated accident), you'll get a harsher sentence.
This is my point TPB know the consequences of their actions.
I think TPB's defence relies on the assumption that a machine (torrent tracker) cannot decide whether some content is okay to redistribute or not. The people who made the content available can, so if you want to prosecute anyone, you should prosecute them.
And the prosecution will use the same point to argue that since the machine can't, it's up to the administrators to make at least some token effort to make this decision.
Throw up a torrent with 500 pornographic pics of yourself? that's 500 legitimate files.
Excellent point. Can't think of an argument right now:) I still think that TPB was set up with the primary purpose of distributing copyrighted mainstream media (i.e. Hollywood movies, popular music and TV shows). What I think and what a legal expert can prove to a court are completely different things, of course.
And you know what? It wouldn't matter even a little bit if 90% of the sites returned by your local DNS server were hosting illegal content because the rest of us aren't willing to lose the other 10% just because idiots like you want an easy target.
No. But TPB is doing more than hosting DNS. They're also doing less than distributing files. A DNS entry is content agnostic. Change the website, the DNS entry stays the same. Unless they URL infringes copyright I can;t see an argument for a DNS entry to be infringing. Torrent files in general are content agnostic but a single specific file is very specific about purpose.
More importantly though, the point is intent. Are we talking about a service that is designed to resolve DNS for pirate sites and only offers legitimate use to those 10% as a side effect?
The torrent file is NOT infringing content.
Yes it is!
See, I can make absolute statements as well.
Exactly my point, neither can TPB, anything that deals with publicly provided content, has that same problem,
TPB could make a token effort. If there's a specific complaint, and pretty compelling evidence, they could remove the tracker. They refuse to do so. Youtube removes content when requested. I believe the others do as well.
Show me one, with public (non-specific, ie: not just Linux OS's, etc) uploading, free sign-up (or none), that actually has content people want, that doesn't have illegal content on it.
People want to pirate stuff so I can't.
There again, the same can be said about TCP/UDP packets, DNS cache's, or even your browser's cache folder. Just because they can do it, doesn't mean that the user is using it for that purpose.
Yes, and the specific ones that are used for infringing copyright are also infringing copyright. A TCP IP packet containing a section of copyrighted file has no purpose other than to distribute that section of that copyrighted file. As such the specific packets may well be infringing. Not all. Just those ones. Just like not all torrent files or servers are infringing. Just some of them.
Name me one file that is not in some way copyrighted.
That's being pedantic.
My meaning was distributing files that do not have the copyright holder's permission to distribute.
there is no possible way for anyone to differentiate such content with anything non-copyrighted without knowing: who made it, where they made it, who holds the copyright for it, who posted it, where the poster got it, where it's posted, where it was posted from, and whether or not is was posted with the intent to distribute by the copyright holder.
I think it's pretty obvious that "Confessions of a Shopaholic" is not being distributed with the copyright holder's permission. I'll quite happily give you odds of 50:1 on it if you want to put money on it.
Once again, we have to assume extreme stupidity to believe that 90% of the content on TPB is distributed with the owners permission.
The ability to post a response while including a part of an originating comment is, itself, a form of copyright violation. It may be a protected form of it,
That's not a copyright violation. Violation means to violate the exclusive rights someone has over copyrighted material without permission. Slashdot gives me implicit permission to download and read their content. I can quote you because fair use isn't copyright violation.
The answer to this is the same as the answer to the following question: Is there any significant legal use for a link to a piece of information you can't confirm the copyright status of prior to following the link? If your answer to that question is "no", then you should quickly close your web browser and pretend you've never heard of the Internet for all the good your current opinion will do you.
But once again, we have to assume impressive stupidity on the part of everyone for not realising the extremely high probability that it's illegal.
In law, there's the concept of "knew or should have known". Maybe the copyright holder on an obscure low budget animation is hard to determine but a yopu can't make the same claim for a major motion picture, whose owners have contacted you explicitly to let you know that they have not given permission for the distribution of the file.
So ultimately TPB's defence relies on a genuine belief that people are making high budget movies and giving them away for free.
I'm allowed to make a copy, does it matter where that copy comes from?
Legally?
Why, yes it does. The law can be a bit stupid like that.
It's to facilitate communication between people for whatever reason they choose.
Seriously?
Oh come on!
Do you really believe that The Pirate Bay was set up for any purpose other than distributing copyrighted files? Do you think they decided they'd set up a torrent server because people want creative commons licensed videos and legally redistributable software? Do you really think that it's just a coincidence that they chose a name that is so strongly linked with unauthorised distribution?
Are you extremely gullible. Have you been lying to justify it so long that you've started to believe your own lies?
is there any significant legal use for a torrent of an non infringing file?
Yes. But what does that have to do with anything? TPB is knowingly hosting content that has no plausible legal use. Yes, they also host some legal content. The Pirate bay serves torrents for some legal content. Also, prohibition era speakeasies offered some legal drinks, people who speed also often drive under the speed limit, and pirates buy some legal content. I'm really not sure where you're going with this. Did you fail to understand my argument? You didn't answer my question, you just asked another.
So, is there any significant legal use for a torrent of an infringing file?
They are just a middle-man, and one that resides in numerous countries all with differing laws,
This just means they have to abide by the laws in all the countries.
For the most part, (to me anyways) it's the same as suing ISP's for distributing illegal content, suing Cat5 cable makers for allowing it, suing hard drive makers for storing it... etc etc...
I see a difference. ISPs don't exist to allow copyright infringement. Hard drive manufacturers don't produce a product solely to store copyright infringing material. Cat 5 cable manufacturers don't make cable with the intention to transfer illegal files. They know it will happen but they can't really do much about it without causing problems for legitimate users.
TPB exists to facilitate copyright infringement. Now, to prove that to a reasonable standard for the courts is up to the prosecution, but I think it's pretty self evident that they would prefer to have the illegal content than not. Those files that have had specific complaints made about them could easily have been removed. It seems obvious, given that there are many sites that do only legal torrents, that removing the illegal ones would not be impossible.
even entirely legitimate/scrutinized torrent servers, still sometimes have "illegal" content on them, just like (whatever company that was) that distributed some illegal (or weren't 'allowed' to distribute) content, by accident... for now "that's ok, you tried"... but when they are the only ones left, they become the new target... then even accidental distribution is a crime...
While it is true that some occasional files will be infringing material, there's a difference between "some occasional" and the "vast majority". This is a slippery slope argument.
I'm not even sure that they can be described as "just" middle men. A torrent file and tracker is more than a collection of links. It's a computer readable set of instructions giving detailed information on exactly what needs to be transferred from where, for the sole purpose of transferring data between computers.
Is the purpose of the phone book to facilitate drug dealers dealing drugs?
Is the main purpose of TPB really something other than facilitating transfer of copyrighted files?
Is there really no legal use for a drug dealer's telephone number?
Is there any significant legal use for a torrent of an infringing file?
Honestly, I think your last point outweighs all the others quite considerably. I'm surprised that children are permitted to stay with an alleged violent person, or that the victim didn't take the children when fleeing.
The problem is serious, because domestic violence victims who've fled an abusive relationship often have to stay in contact with their abuser by phone, particularly in situations where the former couple share custody of their children," Southworth says.
HTH.
Trouble is, if all your friends are on Facebook, it's difficult to persuade them all to go elsewhere. Especially because they have to persuade all their friends and they'll have to persuade their friends...
I don't need to. I just need to show that it was reasonable for me to assume that I'm authorised to do so.
Nobody has made a complaint about the copyright infringement of these websites. The same information doesn't appear to be available elsewhere. None of them contain information that obviously infringes copyright.
I have a problem with lack of anonymity combined with the internet potentially keeping a permanent record of everything I ever say. I don't use my real name on usenet because I might say something that I will be embarrassed about in the future. I feel that would be unfair to future me. Any medium that won't be logged, and I'm happy to provide full information about who I am. As for the usenet alias, the only untruth is the name. I'm honest about my date of birth, where I live, educational background, and the fact that the name is an alias.
Morally, I'd say Google's executives are obligated to do what's best for the company. Legally this is exactly the case. Now, if this was a paper mill, perhaps shareholders would be happy to just have a chunk of the revenue. In this case, shareholders were most likely aware that Google would want to expand into other markets, and this was one of the factors that increased their desire to invest in the company.
Google is in a better position to exploit internet based technology than individual shareholders. They have a strong brand name and will get a certain amount of free publicity through Google's current popularity in technological circles.
Are we absolutely sure this isn't fake news?