Media groups propose anti-piracy 'code of practice' for UK search

Alternatively...

"To use the examples of BPI, MPAA or PACT, we would propose that prioritisation be enabled for searches that contain any of the following key search terms: 'twat', 'pillock', 'out of touch with reality', 'broken', 'numpties', 'clueless', 'cockwombles'.

The URL

It has a typo:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2012/01/30/anti_piracy_code_of_practice_voluntary_one_proposed_for_search_engiines/

Its screwing with my OCD...

Sick

These "media groups" must be power-drunk with the favorable reception ACTA, SOPA and PIPA are getting from certain quarters. Just who the hell is supposed to pay for all the people and resources in government, search engines, cyberlockers, torrent sites and God knows who else they want to do their dirty work for them? They're on a roll and it's hard to blame them for making the most of their momentum, but it's getting beyond insane. If piracy is the disease, their "cure" is pathological.

Translation

"We demand that the entire internet works solely for our personal profit"

NO

Because once anyone agrees to this arbitrary code of practice you KNOW the scope creep will begin based upon 'Well, they're already doing THIS, so it's just a small step for them to do THAT with their search engine, too'

Yet again Big Media is in denial and secretly punting the subconscious message of 'buy your media secondhand cos it's the same quality as new'

It's really time the entertainment industry and the groups that represent them really need to stop telling other industries how to operate and sort their own industry out.

I know I and others repeat ourselves every time this kind of story comes up, but they need to stop criminalising people and asking ISPs and search engines to do their dirty work for them, and look at *why* people are choosing to pirate content instead of buy it. It's a mixture of factors including price, DRM that creates inconvenience for genuine customers but fails to prevent the content being copied, their insistence on milking the same content we bought over and over again - films and albums bought out again every time a new format emerges, albums with bonus tracks after we already bought the original, etc - and their insistence on not playing nicely with the likes of Spotify and Netflix who are trying to make the content available in a legal and convenient way.

Personally, I don't download much these days, only things that are hard to get/out of print. I'm signed up to Spotify and Netflix to get content legally and I buy CD's and DVD's if the album/film is something a consider worthwhile. I also spend quite a lot on games.

Back in the day where I did download things though, I genuinely did get led on to new bands by downloading their albums, and I did go on to buy a lot of albums that I would not have bothered with if I hadn't heard them. Spotify now provides that service for me.

Damages

"A value judgment on how "damaging" illicit material is to rights holders..."

I'd love to see this handled properly in a court case:

"...and the court finds that the plaintiff's work is a crock of shit that not even a deranged person would pay for, and therefore the damages to the plaintiff are ZERO!"

How much time and money has been wasted dreaming this up when it can be avoided by simply going to another country's version of Google?

"take down mobile apps where it is aware that they are designed or known to be used to illegally download entertainment content, either via p2p [peer-to-peer] applications "

Now how am I going to download full-blown Linux ISOs to my phone?

Reaklly!! I mean really?

I wonder if the BPI,MPAA, PACT et all are going to pay for the work the search engine providers will have to do to facilitate this rediculous idea, if it even got that far.

Will they fund the government department that will have to emply peple to monitor and report the work that has been done. Will they then cry unfaiur when the list poff prohibited sites is then published and instead off going to a search engion i'll just have a trueted source off illegal download sites provided by the government.

Would the government tghen not be complicit if i then downloaded from the illicit sites?

I love going to the movies, i dont but cd's or dvds very often and when i do most off teh cd'sa have about 5-10 percent good content and the rest is a load off ols tosh. Can i go back to the BPI and demand a refund off 90% off teh purchase price off the CD please as you have sold me goods not fit for purpouse. IT DIDNT entertain me.

How often have we sat through a hyped film just to be let down, all the good bits seem to be the trailers that are free anyway. Can i have a refund please. I dont think so.

When will these people wake up and smell the roses, the old modle is dead. work out a new modle for the 21st centiuary. everyone else has

We don't need no steenkin' DNS

194.71.107.15

So, they want Google to find out what users actually use 3rd part apps for and then decide whether to list those apps on their app store?

Ignoring the ass-backwards nature of this requirement, have we not already had way too much of Google and the like snooping on our online behaviour?

PS. Writing those numbers at the top of this would be enough to get the whole of El Reg shut down under SOPA.

Epic Freetard Outrage Erupts - More at 11

Most of us accept some sites are 'undesirable' and that search engines should not link to those so it's not the practice at stake it's applicability.

That we cannot prevent undesirable sites from being found in other ways has never seemed good grounds to not try to do as much as we can. There's nothing wrong with trying to do the best we can; it may not be 100% successful but that doesn't make for unsound principles nor unsound law where that applies.

It seems some people are rejecting the proposals not on sound principles but because they want to have access to the material proposed as 'undesirable'. Once again it looks little more than freetards demanding entitlement to their pirated downloads along with the fallacious claims the internet will collapse unless allowed that.

To suggest, as one AC has, that producers of content must expect to have no rights (even though those rights are enshrined in law), and if they don't like that should not produce content, is simply incredible. I'd suggest trolling or agent provocateur but it seems some people do believe such things. I wonder when such freetards will wake up and realise they are aiding those they claim to be fighting?

It's working already

I just searched for "+X-Factor +Greatest +Hits +mp3" and I found nothing....

Thank God.

Seriosouly though, if you want to hide a lie, surround it with obscuring truths.

The copyright mafiaa are fighting a loosing war, first they tried to sue websites out of existence, that worked initially but for every site they took down, 10 more sprang up to replace them. Then they tried to sue downloaders out of existence, they bribed their political lap dogs to introduce legislation that allowed punitive damages against downloaders, the result was single mothers on welfare were given fines for hundreds of thousands of dollars, all that achieved was to hold the copyright mafiaa and the law up to ridicule.

They come up with new DRM systems only to have them broken in a relatively short period of time.

So does anybody actually believe that prevent copyright material in a google search will achieve anything? Or are the copyright mafiaa beginning to believe their own king canute like propaganda? If searching online does not show any links to TPB, I’ll go to the TPB site and search there!!

The copyright mafiaa have stepped up the war several notches; their first attempt at legislating away copyright infringement, DMCA which tried to criminalise any technology that could be used to circumvent DRM, was a failure, and as it turns out, 57% of notices sent to google under the DMCA to demand removal of links were sent by businesses targeting competitors, not copyright infringers.

They have manipulated the law making system to give us ACTA and SOPA, ACTA is a particularly insidious route to take as it is only a trade agreement and all discussions about ACTA have taken place in secret, signatory countries are then expected to enact legislation to support the trade agreement.

The copyright mafiaa have only one goal, total control of the interwebs, this attempt to get copyright infringement removed from search engines is only the first step in a long process, unfortunately their approach is a bit like tying to clean up the banking system by blocking access to the Bahamas, Cayman Islands etc.

These people also miss the main point that lawmakers have been missing when trying to compel ISPs to block stuff.

An ISP is paid by a customer to be a gateway to the internet, that's it. Not to police said access, just connect someone to the world and keep quiet. The same goes for search engines, they provide a searching service and if someone wants to search for "I WANT FREE MUSIC TORRENT" then that's the searcher's call and it is not for the search engine to censor any result. They are, after all, a SEARCH engine not a police/commercial puppet ... or at least they bloody well shouldn't be.

"Internet search engines that operate in the UK"

Clear evidence that they don't get this internet thing.

Who knows where a search engine "operates"? It might or might not have web servers in the UK. They might be handling requests themselves or proxying for app engines elsewhere. The underlying databases are distributed replicas of a dataset that's probably been created by numerous little computers in lots of locations.**

If your search engine really is located in the UK and it stops giving you the results you want, you'll just switch to a different, possibly offshore, one.

** I stand ready to be corrected by somebody who actually knows about search engines.

baby, meet bathwater

For the sake of argument, let's say I wanted to see if there were any free MP3 downloads from Lackluster (an alias of electronic artist Esa Ruoho). Typing in "lackluster download free mp3" into Google currently gives the following link as the third result: http://www.lackluster.org/releases?type=69&format=All

Scanning through that page, I count over 20 recordings which the artist has made available for free download. After checking out the site, it's fairly obvious that this is legit and that kudos is due to the artist for providing us with such an array of freebies. However, if these proposals were to be implemented, my search terms would be subject to extra scrutiny since it includes many trigger words. I realise that the proposals here would not automatically stop me from accessing the search results in this case, /provided/ the artist has taken steps to register his site with an as yet non-existent "certification" entity. However, no guarantees are given that the site will not be blacklisted by default based purely on my search terms.

It's highly likely that these "certification" entities will, in fact, be either collection agencies or agents of the big labels. Neither have a sterling record (to pardon the pun) when it comes to copyrights they don't actually own. A case in point is Edwyn Collins, who was (in)famously prevented from sharing his music via myspace: see http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/06/edwyn-collins-sharing-music

The essential point that I am trying to make here is that although the proposals seem innocuous enough on first reading (provided you read past the knee-jerk reaction that this is simply censorship, pure and simple, and try to see some merit in them), I think it's highly likely that this will end up hurting independent artists. In effect, the established players (not really a good word for them) in the music industry are attempting to set themselves up as gatekeepers, deciding what you can and cannot access. It doesn't matter whether their intentions are as pure and egalitarian as they make themselves out to be here, it's almost guaranteed that "mistakes" will happen, and innocent sites will find themselves cut off from their audiences.

The devil is really in the details of implementation. Can independent artists (including those artists that just compose, record and release music just for fun) ensure that all the search engines won't blacklist them by default? What happens if takedown notices are issued in error? Will the accusation count for more than the eventual exoneration (ie, will there be mechanisms for ensuring that accusations are effectively forgotten once overturned)? How will sites and artists know that their traffic is being blocked by search engines? How will sites and artists know who to contact to remedy the situation? What sort of bureaucracy will be involved in getting un-delisted? What happens to site rankings if some legitimate takedown orders are processed against it--will other users of the site end up being tarred with the same brush and have their details delisted? What about searches with similar keywords? What about sites like archive.org? What about blocking sites in other countries that don't use English as the lingua franca? Et. cetera...

Just my €0.02.

Amazing!

It's amazing how fast these concerned citizens... er, copyright holders are to propose how others should clean up their act to make things easy for the copyright holders. But they seem to be uninterested in cleaning up their *own* shoddy work habits which cause people to pirate in the first place.

Case in point: A movie I *want* to buy was released in the States on Jan 24. I asked the local stores when I could expect to see it on the shelves around here... and got told "not before mid-March". Explain this to me - it's not like the movie is still playing in theatres around here.

So my choices are now the suck-up the industry's blatant disregard for me as a customer ("yeah, you'll want for us to be good and ready like a good little sheeple"), buy it from the US, or just simply download it overnight.

And the industry wonders why pirate downloads are so popular.