Google Blocks Author's Ads For Offering Torrent Of His Own Book 130
An anonymous reader points out the recent trouble of author Cody Jackson, who wrote a book called Learning to Program with Python. He offers the book for sale, but also gives it away for free, and he used the CC-BY license. In order to distribute the book, he posted links to his torrent of it. Unfortunately, this cause Google to suspect his AdSense account for his website. Even after removing the links, he was unable to get in contact with Google's AdSense team to get his accounts restored. After his story was picked up yesterday by Techdirt, somebody at Google "re-reviewed" his case and finally reinstated his account. Jackson had this to say: "One good thing about this is that it has helped raise awareness of the problems with corporate copyright policies and copyright regulation as a whole. When a person is unable to post his/her own products on the 'net because someone fears copyright infringement has occurred, there is a definite problem." This follows a few high-profile situations in which copyright enforcement bots have knocked down perfectly legitimate content.
Begs the question (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the numerous articles about copyright enforcement bots recently, it makes me wonder why there is so little human oversight about account banning. Or even attempting to match the author to the work to the copyright in question to the offending post. Apparently, it is better to throw out all the apples, and review the ones that that claim they aren't bad.
It also makes me wonder why it seems difficult to talk to an actual person at google about account restoration. I hope to never have to go through the process.
Re:A more general problem (Score:2, Interesting)
I had this problem several times back when I was still in college, I was trying to use my checking account to buy a TV from Best Buy (worked there in college, actually had reasonable prices for employees).
After going through the 'check approval process', my check was denied, and I was given a number I needed to call to "authorize" the check. I called the number, and was given the whole, "it was flagged as suspicious, we can't approve the check, the computer says it is suspicious and I only read what is on my monitor" spiel. After arguing for close to an hour, I gave up and had to go to my bank and have them issue a cashier's check for the purchase. Utter idiocy.
Assuming Infringement by Default (Score:5, Interesting)
The default assumption of these automated checkers is that anything shared is infringing.
I've run into this myself. While I give away my book Modern Perl [onyxneon.com] free in electronic forms, my publisher charges a nominal fee for the Kindle version to cover expenses. I made some changes recently to fix some formatting problems and edit out a couple of typos. After I uploaded a new version, the Kindle copyright police declined the update (to a book they'd already allowed in their store) because they thought it was available online for free elsewhere.
I understand that no one wants a million copies of Wikipedia articles clogging up book stores, but it would be nice if there were a way to say "Yes, the contents of this book are available under a Creative Commons license and I have the right to distribute it."
(My publisher has the same right to distribute the printed copy, and Amazon is very happy to sell that version.)
Adsense "Review" (Score:3, Interesting)
Banned from Adsense (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, evidently I got banned from Adsense for life because I put some ads on our forums and the kids did the darnedest thing... they actually clicked on them. A whole lot of times. I really didn't have any control over that. So they kept all the money I was to be paid from ALL of my sites (not just the one that the kids were clicking on), and banned me from Adsense, seemingly forever. I would click on the appeal button and ask what is up, and 6 months later they just say "denied".
I tried some of the other ad networks like Chiquita and Bidvertiser, but most of the ads were misleading or for scams and I had to delete them. The ones I did keep, on the most popular of my sites, have earned less than $1 in the entire time they have been up. Basically, Google has a monopoly on online advertising for small websites, so I'm pretty much screwed on ever making money from website advertising ever again.
Thanks for clicking on the ads, kids! Not...
(I wonder if this means that you can royally screw over websites by going and clicking on their ads every day?)
Re:Get used to it (Score:2, Interesting)
>>> "One good thing about this is that it has helped raise awareness of the problems with corporate copyright policies and copyright regulation as a whole. When a person is unable to post his/her own products on the 'net because someone fears copyright infringement has occurred, there is a definite problem."
> Its only going to get worse.
The system is working perfectly as devised: call me paranoid, but IMHO the main idea is to suppress uncontrolled culture distribution, be it free or from unaffiliated parties (i.e., all the ones from which for-profit distributors cannot take a slice from the revenue). Except that "slice" is loosely defined to be up to 90%.
That's why I think there's no possible compromise with *AA, patent trolls etc. The only good deal is the one by which they're kicked in the *ss and get to pay lawyer/court costs.