Ask pharaoh
Instead of attacking the messenger (Google), the Motion Picture Ass. (!) of America should try getting the message.
Emails obtained after the Sony Pictures hacking attack have revealed just how badly the Motion Picture Ass. of America has been cocking up its fight against piracy. One set of leaked conversations, spotted by TorrentFreak, occurred between Sony studio executives talking about the problem of Google searches showing links to …
TorrentFreak is a news organization. They've done a lot of original articles and interviews on file sharing issues that you wouldn't see on any mainstream sites. They have been blocked by workplace filters and the like in the past, but good luck censoring it from Google.
Google is itself a seller of copyrighted content now through Play Store. I remember they had started negating torrent's rating in the end of 2012. Same year in June or July, they had announced that their store'd be called Google Play and sell media and magazines.
Sounded more of a selfish move to me.
A company that, for a decade did not act much on torrent sites (good or bad is a complicated judgement) and just when it came on the same boat (good boat or bad boat is, yet again, a complicated matter) decided to loose open its canon on the issue.
While I didn't say targeting torrent sites is good or bad, it's pretty clear that Google was not only being a good samaritan.
This is a very basic stuff. Keep you arse in good use, gentleman.
> Sounded more of a selfish move to me.
It's a company out to make money. Did you expect anything else?
Google will go where the money is.
It's a shame the MPAA and its members don't understand that otherwise they might find that the Internet poses previously unimaginable opportunities for them were they predisposed to avail themselves of it.
The likes of Hulu and Netflix understand this. Not only that, cinemas are seeing a massive new revival.
To make money, one requires imagination. The suits in Hollywood are too old to change.
Google should not be manipulating anything, including search results. The service has nothing to do with what people want to search for and it should remain neutral. The Motion Picture Association should work harder cleaning up the sleazy and corrupt motion picture industry rather than concentrating on manipulating Google and the rest of the world. The problem is also with the unreal copyright laws the MPAA have passed. If they don't want the buyer to own something they should stop selling it. When I buy a DVD or a file I should be able to share it with whoever I want. They should not be allowed to sell something, and not only continue to own it, but continue to own the buyer as well.
Google should not be manipulating anything, including search results
Without manipulation there are no search results. They're the results of human-designed, machine-implemented algorithms operating on data. They don't exist in nature.
And, of course, the entire value of Google's search results to the end user is in their "manipulation" (i.e., ranking).
Yes they could indeed.. And then it would be waiting for the next Entirely Reasonable Request from [X] to remove [Y] , and then the next.. and the next..
Google can get away with downgrading some search results, but giving in to outright censorship? Really good for your business, that...
Yes, but what's the difference between downgrading a torrent site and just blocking it? According to the law (good or bad it's the law and we as a society have agreed to follow the law or change it, not simply break the ones we don't like), the sites being downgraded are engaged in piracy. Therefore search sites ought to be blocking, not simply downgrading. Except that we granted aggregators an exemption to that for bulk processing data because it would be too burdensome to make them edit the lists.
This is a bit of a game changer as far as Google is concerned. This tacitly admits that the legal safe harbor provision they've relied on for protection against prosecution is pure fiction. Much as I don't like the way the RIAA and the MPAA have handled their part of copyright protection, I'd say this makes the case that the safe harbor provision needs to die. You either do no evil or you do evil. There is no try.
Then they could remove it form the list altogether.
Yes, that's brilliant. Let anyone get any site removed from Google results by filing copyright-violation claims. There's no way to abuse that process, is there? It wouldn't be at all onerous to implement, would it?
In addition to "Preview" and "Submit", maybe the Reg should put a button at the bottom of the comment form that leads to a short course on critical thinking.