Google Accused of Benefitting From Piracy 162
Clant writes "Google has been accused of benefiting from certain piracy websites because of the Adsense program, according to reports. Several major media companies have called on Google to properly screen their AdSense partners and stop supporting sites that are benefiting from piracy. 'Legal filings show that Google worked with EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com from 2003 to 2005, generating more than $1.1 million in revenue for the sites through the AdSense program. Google reportedly noticed the amount of traffic and advertising served by the two websites and assigned them an account representative to help optimize their efforts.'"
Guilty by association? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guilty by association? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Guilty by association? (Score:4, Informative)
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We're trying to out these exact sites... (Score:2)
It's very hard when you're trying to have a website that is ousting these site, only to end up with AdSense ads to
Re:Guilty by association? (Score:5, Insightful)
And piracy? Why don't they go after the lawyers and politicians who are making money hand over fist?
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Professional courtesy, of course; who do you think it is at the RIAA making noises about this? It may be a muckety muck saying the words, but you can bet it's a lawyer moving the guy's mouth.
And, of course, the separation between 'lawyer' and 'politician' these days is
Hardly... (Score:1, Insightful)
Imagine your a second-hand computer store that realises that the guy who turns up every monday with a bunch of new PCs is quite clearly stealing them from nearby offices. Do you think you have a leg to stand on when you say its nothing to do with you?
Its a different situation if you don't know that a business you deal with is engaged in illegal activit
RTFA sil vous plait (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hardly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hardly... (Score:4, Interesting)
I do know that, as computers and automations have become prevalent, laws have been passed to pass the burden of the crime from the automation-regulator (Google, ISP hosts, etc) to the person actually committing the crime. Look at the DMCA for a fantastic example of how to do this.
Similar laws should apply. In the case of the DMCA, if Google or the ISP starts regulating content, they run the risk of losing their common carrier status. Instead, they wait for a complaint, and then take action. For ads, the burden should be even lighter, because one or two instances of copyright infringement on a site should not be enough to force Google to pull their ads or risk legal trouble.
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But anyway... if you opened a house with free girls in it. And you charged folks a hundred bucks an hour to go into the house... you would be busted for something.
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Or suppose one of your customers regularly parks on yellow lines. Obviously you'd refuse to ever do business with him again! Of course the difference is that parking illegally can have serious consequences for road safety and/or congestion, unlike copyright infringement.
Re:Hardly... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, copyright infringement DOES have serious consequences for road congestion! You see, the internet is not a dumptruck. It is a series of tubes. Downloading clogs the tubes, slowing the internets down for everyone else.
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If the grocery store had a guy set aside specifically to work with the pirate to help make him a millionaire, then I'd say you have some kind of comparison.
Try to at least read the summary here, before engaging in automatic "it involves teh evil RIAA therefore they must be wrong" slashdot groupthink.
Re:Guilty by association? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a very good analogy. A better one is that a fellow comes into the grocery store every so often and makes exceptionally large purchases. The store manager talks with the fellow a bit about his grocery purchasing habits. The fellow replies that he needs the food for his "crew". The store manager then says that he'll help by assigning a special employee to expidite the fellow's shopping trips.
Six months later, the press walks in and says, "How can you provide such service to a known pirate!?"
Re:Guilty by association? (Score:4, Funny)
AT&T benefit from Mafia crime! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Guilty by association? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, I've helped people get my GPL'ed libraries working by exchanging a few emails, but I don't know what they are doing with them. Am I guilty if it turns out they are using it to break the law? After all I "worked" with them to get it functioning. If a car salesman sells a car to someone asking for a car "which can cross the state quickly", and that client later commits a murder and goes on the run, is the salesman guilty? He "advised" the client on how to "optimize" his nefarious plan.
No, these people should not be guilty, because it is madness to expect everyone to "enforce" laws on their clients, going only on mere suspicion. The most you should ask of people or companies is to report suspicious activity to the relevant authorities, and let them investigate it. Refusing to do business with a company could actually put you at a greater legal risk if that company turns out to be legitimate.
Re:Guilty by association? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is pretty close to your example of a mechanic helping get a fast car into the hands of a criminal. That one might be in the gray area, and might hinge on how clear it is that the guy was going to commit a crime. Another good example is head shops, which sell products often used for illicit drug use: Clinton winked at head shops and let them sell bongs to stoners; but Bush wouldn't do that, he enforced the law and closed down a lot of head shops all over the country, saying they had a reasonable expectation that bongs weren't being used as "tobacco water pipes".
In the case at hand, Google would also be in the gray area, and the question is whether they had a reasonable expectation that ThePirageBay.ORG was engaging in illegal activity. From what little I know of this case, I am inclined to give Google the benefit of the doubt, especially considering ThePirateBay claims they don't break any of their local laws. But, I do object to your suggestion that ancillary consideration given to a criminal by a knowing third party does not or should not attach responsibility onto that third party -- it does, as it should.
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What kind of nutcase jury would convict for something like that? Given that the bank robber got that far, it's a fair assumption that he/she has some sort of weapon; you'd be crazy to refuse.
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That said, if you read their terms & conditions they do actually specify that they don't want their ads on certain types of sites, such as porn sites, sites that may offend people, or sites that may be violating copyright law. I think they should loosen up and allow those sites, though. It's quite limiting because any site that discusses re
Verdict: not evil (Score:1, Insightful)
In fact, IMO, sharing songs and what-not is not morally wrong. The laws that make it illegal are unjust, and an unjust law is no law at all. So, IMO, it is only "technically" illegal, those laws should not be enforced or obeyed. Qualifier: I am not a proponent of the complete dissolution of copyright or other "Intellectual Property" (sic) type laws, though I do think that these laws need some very
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Common carrier laws for advertisers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, when you sign up to be an AdSense "partner" it does tell you that they will review your site's content to make sure that it will be acceptable for their ads. They won't allow you to be a porn site, etc, etc, etc.
So, if they are doing that, then they should be able to block anything else that they might not want to have their ad
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So, if they are doing that, then they should be able to block anything else that they might not want to have their ads displayed on.
Just because their T&C says they *can* do it, doesn't mean they actually *will*. This is like your ISP says they can block your account for doing anything il
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Are you kidding? That's their specialty. (Score:2)
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information. [google.com]" Do you really think that a company with such an ambitious goal can hide behind "there's too many accounts to police"?
I don't think they should have to police the sites that participate in AdSense, but to say that Google doesn't have the means to filter their clients seems a bit off the mark.
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Are you insane?
Local law? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where are these sites located? First off, selling repackaged BitTorrent clients isn't against the law. Second, are these sites hosted and run from areas of the world that permit you to link to torrents regardless of their content?
While this would be an embarrassment to Google here in the US because our media sucks and never tells full truths, it wouldn't matter
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They're just whining at this point.
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I don't think google should add any extra screening automatically. I would prefer it if they sent dmca notification style letters to start the screening process. Would it be possible to craft the reporting interface that would run a moddified diff (one that can render video and compare the two or whatever the audio equivelent would be) that looked for similarities to a known good sample provided by the organization claiming copyrigh
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I don't think that would be wise. The Internet is global. If a child porn site was hosted in some third world country with no laws against it, Google would still be unwise to do business with them--they're a U.S. company and a good bit of any revenue-generating traffic could very well be visitors from within the U.S.
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats like requesting the United Postal Service to check every single package to make sure nobody is mailing love letters to anyone other then their husbands/wives. You could do it, with enough money and willpower, MAYBE, but its not excatly their responsibility.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google didn't accidentally let a pirate site through the net. They awarded an account manager to them, and generated a million dollars worth of revenue for them. They made 2 guys who were trying to make money from trading copyrighted content into millionaires, no doubt boosting some google profits at the same time.
Try and at least read the summary.
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Its not their job. They are there to make money, and find the stuff you're searching for. Thats it. They are not morally or legally responsible for what you search for, or how they go about advertizing for something on someone elses website. If the people holding the copywrites are against the site, have them take down the site.
If nothing else google did them a favor, as it made t
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is everyone defending this? because you happen to like downloading copyrighted stuff for free? what if the site was a race hate site? is that just hunky dory? Imagine complaining to google about them making piles of cash from the KKK website, and to be told "tough shit, we ain't the cops pal". Is that OK?
No respectable company should carry on like this. The fact that a lot of slashdot people dislike the RIAA doesn't make what google are doing defensible. They can omit some results in search terms if they like (see china), don't kid yourself it would be hard for them not to place adsense on pirate sites.
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Criminals? Have these guys been prosecuted for anything or is it a purely civil matter? Although it is true that copyright infringement can in some circumstances in some jurisdictions amount to a criminal offense, it sure isn't Google's job to find them guilty or otherwise. The most that should be expected of them if they really suspected criminal activity is to report the matter to the police.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now now, lets not confuse legality with morality. Criminal activities aren't neccesarily immoral. Legal and moral are entirely unrelated concepts. You have a legal obligation if the law says so. You have a moral obligation if you a dealing with someone who is doing something immoral.
'Why is everyone defending this?'
I run a respectable computer service business. My business is fixing computers not judging customers. I don't care what activities my customers engage in; even with the computers. They could be into porn, the mob, neo-nazi's, democrats, or republicans. I am not the police nor am I a judge. I provide and repair tools I am not responsible for how people choose to use those tools.
I don't see that Google has any responsibility to police websites anymore than automotive shop that fixed the site owner's car last week had an obligation to refuse him service. That responsibility falls on others.
It all hinges on whether Google knew... (Score:2)
Let's say you repair a guy's computer and you notice that there's on there. Not only is there on there, you can tell that it's on there because he's using it to seed his distribution network. Not only that, but you realize that he has a fair amount of subscribers and gets a good portion of revenue from having said . Now you strike a deal with him - you'll tell him that if he purchases that shiny new server, he can serve even more customers... and you'll take, say, 1%.
You k
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Regardless, you have some groups (the RIAA, MPAA, and others like them) who would like nothing better than to see ISPs and services such as Google forced into the role of high-tech censor, and worse, be made responsible for what sites they merely link to. Then there's everyone else who would prefer otherwise. Be very careful when requesting that a corporate or
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To diagnose the cause of the fault?
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Because it is an irrelevant point. If the revenue source were illegal then it would be the entire point but the revenue source is perfectly legal in this case. The business google is engaged in is 100% legal from source to destination.
You also seem to be ignoring the biggest point of all. Here in th
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What I meant all over the place there was...
<illegal stuff>
( pst. Slashdot. parsing < and > is NOT plain old text! If I wanted that, I'd pick "HTML Formatted"! )
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Just because some things are both does not make a harmony between the two concepts.
For instance, wet and delicious are two unrelated concepts yet lobster is both. Being wet does not make the lobster delicious anymore than being legal makes moral actions moral.
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So what if they awarded an account manager, what do you think that means? That they have someone examine every aspect of the site for illegal activity? They did not assign a ip lawyer to the site, they assigned an account manager.
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No, in this case, it would be like asking the USPS to please not assign account representatives to personally work with companies mailing kiddie porn.
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They should do the same thing with all the searches too. Every possible variation of "Parent Directory" some.bad.song.mp3 must be accounted for or Larry and Sergey are going to jail.
Or, they could deal with the people causing trouble in the first place. Whichever makes more sense.
Stunning... and yet not at all. (Score:1, Offtopic)
But what if they are active in trying to be the Ad Tracker for these sites, so that Big Brother can monitor the population a little more effectively?
Google and NSA [redtractor-usa.com] Goolge and NSA [uneasysilence.com] Google and NSA [washingtonpost.com]
Then perhaps, it is justified.
Not Evil? (Score:2, Interesting)
While not illegal, Google seems to be treading in the gray a lot, lately. From government influence to allowing a repressive regime to censor content to pirate profits, Google should just announce that it has fully joined the ranks of Corporate America and disavows its founding principles.
Google then:
Google now:
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Google then:
Google now(stock price near 500):
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I love you. Will you marry me?
Wait, are you male or female?
Hell, what's it matter? I'm in Washington, we can get away with anything. Or, they'll make a law to allow it soon enough.
So, how about it?
Re:Not Evil? (Score:5, Interesting)
And now its happy fun slashdot analogy time. Should the auto manufacturer be held liable for the death of a child picked up by a pedophile in their car advertised as the safest for children? (Check me out, slashdot car analogy and think of the children all in one).
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I hate to sound like Mr. Rudepants, but how could anyone be so naive?
I know I could be nicer, but it's amazing to me, after all these years, that anybody could still be thinking as this person does.
Do all of you *really* think Google is in this for the benefit of the world? That they're a bunch of philanthropists, going around and doing good for everybody?
In my time at Microsoft, I've o
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The tone was very much in line with many other comments - nothing to set it apart.
Other than your history, of which I know nothing, as there are far too many people registered on
If "way too many
So effing what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, because of its volume, it's probably also safe to say Google does business with active sexual predators, drug dealers and serial murderers.
Google's just an average media company, like NBC, not the thought police. Let the market sort it out: if people decide that all the losers Google whores for really are just selling crap, they'll figure it out eventually.
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Legal.
right-wing nutjobs
Legal.
and presidential candidates.
Legal (regulated).
That's the difference. Apparently some sites which they dedicate employees to help may not be legal.
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Google provides advertising. It is not thei
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Exactly. And really, what Google is doing should help bring sites like this to public attention, and if they're doing something illegal, then the government can go after the
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So if a car dealership "dedicates employees" (eg, an on-call salesmen) to a local front-organization for the mob, has the car dealership acted illegally or even unethically?
As for the sites in question dealing in copyrighted material - So does Amazon. Would you require Google to make sure Amazon has the right to resell every book and CD they list?
Google HAD to support these sites. (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that Google is based in the US. If they discriminated against these site and removed their Adsense, Google would have been sued. So clearly they did the right thing ;)
gasmonsoRe: (Score:2)
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Narrow? You have to be completely kidding me. Apartment buildings that have elevators are forced to have handicap accessible apartments on floors reachable by the elevator because if they didn't, they wouldn't be complying with the American Disabilities Act. *That is ridiculous* If I'm building an apartment building, why should I have to pay extra money for th
Benefitting from piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
To some degree artists and record labels benefit from piracy, but lets hold off on that, but it is a form of marketing.
Harddrive manufactures, companies that sell MP3 players, blank media, and all of that benefits from piracy.
Personally, I believe that content should be free or kinda taxed/subsidized by hardware. Hardware breaks, and has to be either replaced or done without.
I pay my ISP a flat fee for internet, but I don't pay for "content" besides my donation to slashdot.
I pay hundreds/thousands of dollars for hardware that breaks all the time, but I don't pay a small fraction of that on software because its just not worth it.
Good or law-abiding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the conundrum: Even if it was lawful, was it "good?"
I believe the more power and control of capital a company acquires, the more difficult it is for the company to examine its own behavior under the lens of ethics. In time all decisions become decided on the basis of whether they are legal or not, which is a completely different calculus. A company can scrupulously follow the law and still act unethically.
The "do no evil" mantra might help Google employees feel like they're not actually working at a tremendously powerful publicly-traded company, and it probably still has a lot of influence on decisionmaking at the company. But I have a hard time believing that we won't be reading more and more stories of questionable ethics at Google as their power grows. I commend the leadership at Google for attempting to buck the forces at work here, but power still corrupts; it's the nature of the beast.
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Lawful, good? (Score:1)
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Re:Good or law-abiding? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, yes.
Google could decide that it would be the arbiter of what should be advertised on its pages. In most cases, it has not. This is a tremendous amount of restraint for a company that could literally name winners and losers in the marketplace. In treating even scumballs like this (and I say that not because of the downloading, but because their stuff is adware-infested crap) in an evenhanded manner, I think that Google is doing the right thing. Remember that free speech (and yes, advertising is speech) is worthless unless we also defend the speech of scumballs. Google has done nothing that they would not have done with any other client of that size. And that *is* good.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
The gub'mint is also looking into allegations that Dell has profited from selling computers to known spammers.
Everyone benefits from piracy (Score:2)
Google just happens to be making millions of dollars and some lawyer thinks he can prove it's shady and wants to get a cut.
Where's the Crime? (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, how much does Adobe care that Photochop is pirated? Very little actually. They get onwards of 80% of their Photochop sales in upgrades. I will be generous with adobe and estimate half or more of the upgrade sales are from people with legitimate licenses. The other half are finally making enough money to pay for a photochop license.
I would be very interested to find out how *this* specific story about Google and piracy got published. Discrediting Google seems to be the intent more than anything else.
McDonald's guilty of supporting street gangs (Score:2, Informative)
They knowingly go on serving who ever has an appetite for their food, and the cash ready to pay for it.
No screening, no checking IDs... "Food for profit" is the evil game they play.
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Fine.
Tomorrow, McDonald's sets up an office in east Compton, California. They assign two employees to the new office, whose stated assignment is to set up the food supply lines for the Cryps during their coming gang war against the Bloods. The Bloods, of course, have already got a dedicated agent from Burger King overseeing their own distribution problems.
Still feel the same?
Don't you just love ana
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You make a very good point, however unrelated.
Hear hear! (Score:2, Insightful)
Makes legit people mad (Score:4, Informative)
Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Guess we learn something new every day!
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The Chewbacca Offense (Score:3, Funny)
These website operators have the money - or the liquidatable assets - to make good on any judgment against them. Instead, they choose to sue children, old people, and disabled people, none of whom have pockets deep enough to pay out the outrageous sums the Mafiaa is claiming as damages, even though it's estimated that they lose money on every one of these lawsuits.
So what? Microsoft benefits from piracy too (Score:3, Funny)
Stop press!!! Post office Colluded with Unabomber! (Score:3, Insightful)
It is dissapointing when your an advertiser (Score:2)
Perhaps there are marketers that could see this profitable, i say leave that to Adbrite and other mass CPM sellers selling junk and have google focus on whats legit.
If for anything google should hand qualify every site it approves and be liable for the network they are selling to there advert
One could argue... (Score:2)
In the Web's early days it was legally decided that linking to a site could require the site
owner's permission -- a fact that has largely been forgotten out of both convenience and mutual
benefit. But the nature of that law did establish (and does preserve) the rights holder's
ownership and control of linkage to his property. This linkage is not compensated -- in fact
it is reverse compensated in the case of AdWor
More & Less (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously...
Until they even prove/convict someone of something on a website like that, is it even fair, according to our legal system's Innocent Until Proven Guilty policy, to say that Google is advertising on websites engaged in illegal activity? I for one, like my warez, pr0n, and MP3s. And anything that helps keep th
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There are some sites that are a grey area, but some blatantly are not. I'd like to see google cut off the supply of ad funds to those sites.
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for this to be true, i can't be certain tho but doing that usually gives torrentlinks to all the major players: TPB, isohunt, torrentspy, demonoid, torrentz, mininova,
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"I'd venture that they rarely have paid anyone over a thousand dollars. They also have a tendency to not pay people on the fringe at all. Lots of sites are suddenly unacceptable to Google once they reach the hundred dollar payout."
I don't like replying to ACs, but: I hit $1K in payouts a while back and I'm going strong. Google recently asked me (along with a bunch of other people) to add more 300x250 format spots so they can pump more ads.
"(multiply by at least 5 to convert "visits" to "hits" and mul
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I think it makes 'em look pretty damned good without any spin at all... They siezed the moral high ground, served the customers needs, and made money for the share holders. What's your problem with that?
Do note, though, that Google is not God. More like a supplicant for the position Lucifer once held.