Category Archives: Google

May 31 2012

RIAA: Google Not Being Transparent About Its Own Copyright Transparency Report

Fact #1: In order to notify Google of an infringement, you first need to find the infringement. But Google places artificial limits on the number of queries that can be made by a copyright owner to identify infringements. These limits significantly decrease the utility of Google’s take down tool given the vast nature of the piracy problem today and the number of titles we are trying to protect. The number of queries they allow is miniscule, especially when you consider that Google handles more than 3 billion searches per day. Yet Google has denied requests to remove this barrier to finding the infringements.

Fact #2: You can’t notify Google about the scope of the problem if it limits the notices it will accept and process through its automated tool. And that is what Google does. On top of the query limitation, Google also limits the number of links we can ask them to remove per day. Google has the resources to allow take downs that would more meaningfully address the piracy problem it recognizes, given that it likely indexes hundreds of millions of links per day. Yet this limitation remains despite requests to remove it.

Fact #3: One needs to consider these numbers and Google’s activities in context. Google says it received requests to remove 1.2 million links from 1000 copyright owners in one month. But consider that Google has identified nearly 5 million new links posted in just the last month in searches for free mp3 downloads of just the top 10 Billboard tracks. The constraints Google has placed on the tools they promote to deter infringement are well below what is necessary to identify and notice infringements on the Billboard top 10, much less the entire catalog of the American creative community.
Googl
Fact #4: Google’s “transparency report” calculates the percentage of a site that is infringing – but this data is flawed and of little value on its own. Specifically, Google claims that the DMCA notices it has received for a site represent less than .1% of the links it had indexed for the domains at the top of this list. But this number is misleading given the constraints imposed by Google on a copyright owner’s ability to find infringements and send notices to Google. If these constraints did not exist, how many more links on these sites might be identified? For example, Google calculates that infringing links account for only .1% of links on filestube, a notorious source of infringing links. For anyone who knows filestube, this seems unlikely, especially given that Google’s data doesn’t include DMCA notices sent directly to the site. Moreover, Google’s methodology fails to account for the percentage of traffic to the infringing portion of the site compared to any potential non-infringing portions. Let’s give copyright owners the ability to access all the pages on a site and take down all the infringing links, and then let’s rationally discuss how to categorize the sites.

Fact #5: Google’s data shows why its interpretation of the DMCA makes it ineffective. Let’s take a step back for a moment. Everyone – including Google – knows that the worst sites are repopulated with links to infringing files of the same content as quickly as links are taken down. For example, in a recent one month period, we sent Google, and the site in question, multiple DMCA notices concerning over 300 separate unauthorized copies of the same musical recording owned by one of our member companies. Yet that song is still available on that site today, and we reached it via a search result link indexed by Google. This highlights the futility of the exercise: if “take down” does not mean “keep down,” then Google’s limitations merely perpetuate the fraud wrought on copyright owners by those who game the system under the DMCA.  

More:
http://www.riaa.com/blog.php?content_selector=riaa-news-blog&blog_selector=Clear-Facts-&blog_type=&news_month_filter=5&news_year_filter=2012

May 31 2012

Consumer group says Google’s self-driving cars pose privacy risk

“Without appropriate regulations, Google’s vehicles will be able to gather unprecedented amounts of information about the use of those vehicles. How will it be used? Just as Google tracks us around the Information Superhighway, it will now be looking over our shoulders on every highway and byway”

More:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-google-car-protest-20120530,0,6380083.story

May 31 2012

Because Google has behaved itself since the world rose up in outrage against its uninvited Big Brotherism, its behavior before it was spooked into ending its WiFi data collection can go through to the keeper

There is a faint hint that a new investigation wouldn’t be worth the effort under current Australian privacy laws, with Pilgrim noting that the current agreement had to be agreed with Google, because his office can’t impose enforceable undertakings. That agreement includes Google’s apology to Australians for collecting WiFi payload data, conducting a privacy assessment for future changes to StreetView data collection, and consulting with the commissioner about all data collection activities in Australia

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/30/no_new_privacy_investigation_into_google_oz/

May 31 2012

Google is apparently compensated by the vendors that appear in its Flight Search and Hotel Finder vertical search engines

So here’s what that means: Last year, Google launched Hotel Finder and Flight Search, seemingly to compete with Kayak or Hotels.com. Both now appear prominently on Google’s main search results page. At the time, it seemed like Google was just running roughshod over every industry, gathering up precious information while it trampled over the once-profitable fields sown by competitors that couldn’t afford to operate on the slim margins Google does.

Now, though, there’s another layer: Google is collecting money from vendors its search engines point users toward. The results seem to be the same as pure “organic” results, just now companies are paying Google for the referral. So if you grab a Delta flight through Google Flights, Delta will kick back a percentage of your ticket price to Google. Totally fair!

But it also goes against the Google’s fundamental principle that search results should always be organic and transparent.

http://gizmodo.com/5914381/googles-letting-companies-pay-for-search-results

May 31 2012

Since “Search Plus Your World” hit the scene, Google traffic to Facebook pages has dropped 51 percent

Studying 500 Facebook fan pages with at least 10,000 fans, the analytics company looked at external referrals from Google and Bing. Before January, Google drove 9.25 percent of external traffic to Facebook and now it drives just 4.52 percent.

Bing’s referral traffic seems to follow a similar trend — dropping by a whopping 59 percent from 2011 to 2012.

So is “Search Plus Your World” to blame? The answer is unclear.

PageLever’s co-founder Jeff Widman points out that Google’s referral traffic to Facebook actually began to mysteriously fall off three days before the January 10 launch of “Search Plus Your World.”

“Referral traffic from both Google and Bing to Facebook Pages started dropping on January 7th. That’s three days before Google rolled out SPYW,” Widman told CNET. “The timing is certainly suspicious, but it doesn’t explain why traffic from Bing plummeted as well.”

More:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57444167-93/facebooks-traffic-from-google-and-bing-takes-a-nosedive/

May 31 2012

Google doesn’t trust anyone – people, officials, even governments – to understand anything. As a result, it is the most secretive Internet entity – and disingenuous about that secrecy

For the last several years I have been on a quest—see my new book, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet—to visit the actual, physical Internet: its wires, buildings, and places. We tend to think of infrastructure like this—when we bother to think of it at all—as top secret and obscured, the kinds of places listed in WikiLeaks dumps, protected by rent-a-cops, and generally inscrutable. All those things are undoubtedly true.

Yet the Internet I visited was also a surprisingly friendly place, populated by smart, welcoming people, proud of what they do and eager to tell me about it. Inevitably, when I arrived at some unmarked building crucial to the network’s functioning, the same thing happened: the veil of secrecy didn’t descend, but lifted. My guides happily led me around, and nearly always spent extra time to make sure I understood what I was looking at. This happened dozens of times, all over the world. The cumulative message was clear: It’s my Internet, but it’s your Internet too. You can know how it works. You should know how it works.

The one exception to that openness was Google—and the strange hypocrisy of that is something I’ve yet to get over. This is the company you likely entrust with your personal correspondence, your most intimate instant messages, and a full accounting of your curiosity (going back years). But Google does not trust you.

And it’s not that they don’t trust you to keep a secret, as you trust them, but rather they don’t trust you to understand. Their stance is the corporate equivalent of a 1950s-era gynecologist who believes women can’t comprehend what’s being done to their own bodies. “Don’t worry about a thing” Google purrs. “We’ll take care of you.”

More:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/29/google-thinks-you-re-stupid-and-works-to-keep-you-in-the-dark.html

May 30 2012

A French superior court ruled in favor of YouTube on Tuesday, saying that the Google-owned video sharing platform did not infringe upon TF1, one of the biggest national TV channels in the country

TF1 claimed that YouTube users uploaded videos of some of the sports and film productions that the channel had the rights to distribute, and that Google owed the company up to €141 million (or about $176 million) in damages.

Instead the Tribunal de Grande Instance determined that YouTube was not responsible for filtering the videos that users upload to the platform, and ordered TF1 to pay Google €80,000 (or about $99,900) for legal fees incurred since the case was brought to court back in 2008.

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/french-court-gives-youtube-a-victory-in-copyright-infringement-case/

May 28 2012

Sinister truth about Google spies: Street View cars stole information from British households but executives ‘covered it up’ for years

  • Work of Street View cars to be examined over allegations Google used them to download personal details
  • Emails, texts, photos and documents taken from wi-fi networks as cars photographed British roads
  • Engineer who designed software said a privacy lawyer should be consulted
  • Calls for police and Information Commissioner to investigate new evidence

Google is facing an inquiry into claims that it deliberately harvested information from millions of UK home computers.

The Information Commissioner data protection watchdog is expected to examine the work of the internet giant’s Street View cars.

They downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from wi-fi networks as they photographed virtually every British road.

It is two years since Google first admitted stealing fragments of personal data, but claimed it was a ‘mistake’.

Now the full scale of its activities has emerged amid accusations of a cover-up after US regulators found a senior manager was warned as early as 2007 that the information was being captured as its cars trawled the country but did nothing.

Close links between Google and the Conservative Party were on display this weekend at the society wedding of senior Google executive Naomi Gummer. Miss Gummer, a former political secretary to Jeremy Hunt, married Henry Allsopp, 38, in an Oxfordshire ceremony attended by Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, as well as the embattled Culture Secretary, who came with his wife and their two young children.

More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150606/Google-deliberately-stole-information-executives-covered-years.html

See also:

Google engineer in Street View probe identifies as a Palo Alto hacker Marius Milner
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/02/google-engineer-in-street-view-probe-identifies-as-a-palo-alto-hacker-marius-milner/

May 26 2012

Last Year Google Rejected 610,000 Websites And Disapproved 134 Million Ads

This is no censorship because Google itself can make money doing this

Ads that are in violation of our ads policies aren’t allowed to be shown on Google and our AdSense partner sites. For many repeat offenders, we ban not just ads but also advertisers who seek to abuse our advertising system to take advantage of people. In the case of ads that are promoting counterfeit goods, we typically ban the advertiser after only one violation. Here are some metrics that give some insight into the scale of the impact we have had over time, showing the numbers of actions we’ve taken against advertiser accounts, sites and ads. You can see that the numbers are growing—and growing faster over time.

We find that there are relatively few malicious players, who make multiple attempts to bypass our defenses to defraud users. As we get better and faster at catching these advertisers, they redouble their efforts and create more accounts at an even faster rate.

Even in this ever-escalating arms race, our efforts are working. One method we use to test the success of our efforts is to ask human raters to tell us how we’re doing. These human raters review a set of sites that are advertised on Google. We use a large set of sites in order to get an accurate statistical reading of our efforts. We also weight the sites in our statistical sample based on the number of times a particular site was displayed so that if a particular site is shown more often, it’s more likely to be in our sample set. By using human raters, we can calibrate our automated systems and ensure that we’re improving our efforts over time. In 2011, we reduced the percentage of bad ads by more than 50 percent compared with 2010. That means the proportion of bad ads that are showing on Google was halved in just a year.

Google’s long-term success is based on people trusting our products. We want to make sure that the ads on Google are safe and trustworthy, and we’re not satisfied until we do.

Posted by David W. Baker, Director of Engineering, Advertising

May 25 2012

‘Father of the Internet’ and Googler Vint Cerf calls out U.S. government on CISPA and called hacktivists groups like Anonymous “counterproductive”

Hacker collective becoming more and more ‘loosely-knit’

Oddly enough Cerf did not talk about Google’s silence on these new cybersecurity bills…

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/05/22/father-internet-calls-out-us-government-cispa

May 24 2012

Google, which spent $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola and its patents in a deal that closed Tuesday, has suffered a major legal defeat at the hands of Microsoft, which successfully argued to a German court that Motorola has violated a patent related to text messaging

The ruling means Microsoft can enforce a ban onAndroid products in Germany. But more importantly, it could signal an end to at least one long-running dispute between Microsoft and Android players. In the increasingly popular game of technology legal warfare, the side that gets to a significant ban first typically has the upper hand in negotiating a settlement.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal-win-over-google-may-signal-ceasefire/

May 23 2012

‘We’ve done nothing wrong’ – Google’s Schmidt on Euro antitrust probe

Schmidt declined to respond on whether his firm would indeed put forward any “remedies” as requested by Almunia, who was clear that a Statement of Objections could be issued within weeks if Google didn’t play ball.

Schmidt claimed that he hadn’t seen any precise examples of which laws his company might have abused and remained steadfast that his firm would be continuing to talk to the competition commissioner and his team.

Earlier, Schmidt told the Big Tent crowd that he was “not aware of anything we’ve done wrong. We’re happy to be educated on the contrary”.

Beyond that, he said “we’re not going to speculate”, which is interesting not least because of the amount of evidence that has been placed in the public domain from complainants who have grumbled to the European Commission that Google does favour its own search results over others.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/23/eric_schmidt_google_big_tent/

May 23 2012

Google may not be willing to comment on how much money it makes from pornography online, but the search giant’s UK public policy head Sarah Hunter has unsurprisingly urged caution when it comes to ISPs filtering content over their networks

Speaking at Google’s annual Big Tent event in Watford this morning, Hunter gently tussled with a panel that included TalkTalk’s executive director Andrew Heaney, the Daily Mail‘s Amanda Platell and Index on Censorship’s Kirsty Hughes over how to protect children from smut on the internet.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/23/google_big_tent_smut_debate/

Previously:

When Porn Is Even More Of A Cash Cow Than Piracy: Survey Finds UK Internet Users Oppose Mandatory ISP Adult Site Blocks
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/21/when-porn-is-even-more-of-a-cash-cow-than-piracy-survey-finds-uk-internet-users-oppose-mandatory-isp-adult-site-blocks/ 

May 23 2012

Kazaa code rises from ashes to help ISPs block pirated material for profit. Can block child porn too! And replace Google’s Ads!

Talk about disruptive technologies. The article also suggests that there’s a commercial incentive needed if one wants ISPs to be dealing with piracy issues. It’s interesting how all these – very different – topics are being put in the same basket: it is probably all zeros and ones right? Pirated files, child abuse images, online advertising…just identify, replace and make some money while doing it…

The people behind a company once accused of being complicit in copyright infringement through peer-to-peer filesharing are now selling software that blocks pirated content—and gives Internet service providers a way to make cash in the process. And soon, a version of the same technology could be used by ISPs to inject their own advertisements into search results—a capability that is sure to raise the ire of proponents of network neutrality.

Global File Systems LLC, a subsidiary of Kazaa owners Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. (BDE), have developed software that combines a database of “known bad files” with Web filtering technology at the ISP’s firewall, allowing ISPs to intercept and change links in search results being passed back to a user’s PC—and sending searchers to sites where the user can pay for legitimate copies of the content.

“A number of trials have shown that, properly priced, it’s possible for the content owners and the ISP partners to take back customers from the pirate operation,” BDE’s Michael Speck, who manages the content management business, told Ars in an interview. He said that the software, called Global File Registry—advertised with the tag line, “What goes up can come down”—offers an opportunity to end “the friction between content owners and ISPs,” and to make content blocking a no-cost or profit-making capability for the ISPs themselves.

Speck said that the other solutions proposed by content owners and some ISPs to stop piracy (such as those that were part of drafts of the failed SOPA and PIPA legislation) require fundamental changes to the way the Internet works. BDE’s approach, he said, “is a software platform integrated into the existing machinery of the Internet,” and doesn’t require changes to the Domain Name Service.

Ironically, Global File Registry is based on Truenames, a file identification technology that was originally part of the Kazaa filesharing service. “It’s the Truenames patents that allow individual items of content to be located within a peer-to-peer or cloud environment,” Speck said. BDE has pursued a number of cloud companies to get them to license the technology, and Speck says that many have bought in, including Skype, Level 3 Communications, and Google (which Speck called “one of our most enthusiastic licensees”).

In the case of Global File Registry, which BDE has worked with Cisco to develop over the past few years, a database of Truenames identifying information is combined with the existing content-filtering capability of firewalls to intercept links to infringing content being returned in search results. The software, which is embedded in the ISP’s firewall, then modifies the data to remove and replace the link. “ISPs already have equipment that can identify ‘bad data’,” Speck said. “We’re only asking the machinery that operates the Internet to do one more thing after it identifies bad data—and that is to convert it to a positive response.”

Speck added that the software doesn’t look at the source of the infringing content or the destination of the search results, so it doesn’t identify users trying to access the content. “It’s only a refinement of the data being delivered,” he said.

Global File Registry is already being deployed, and BDE is initially marketing the software to ISPs in Australia, New Zealand, and France. In addition to the anti-piracy version of the software, Global File Registry is also being packaged for law enforcement customers in a version the company plans to give away as a way to block access to child pornography sites, drawing from data collected by child protection organizations.

But what may be the most controversial version of the Global File Registry product is yet to come. Speck says Global File Systems is preparing a version for the US market that allows ISPs to intercept contextual ads in search results and inject their own advertisements in their place. “At the moment, ISP operators invest in the network, acquire customers, and just open the window to the Internet, allowing other people to push advertising down customers’s throats,” Speck said. “We believe it’s incongruous that ISPs should just open the window and allow them to force-feed advertising,” rather than getting their own advertising revenue, he explained.

Speck calls the software “an ISP packet-adjusted advertising platform,” and says it relies on the same technology as the anti-piracy software. “Relying on that same technology, we have been able to replace a search engine or website’s advertising with the ISP’s own advertising,” he said. But he added that “we’re not suggesting we can forensically remove and replace every advertisement from every webpage”—the technology is specifically targeted at search-based ads “of a certain category.”

When asked how Google would feel about the idea of ISPs swapping their own advertisements for Google’s paid ads, Speck said, “I think they’re excited about the prospect that someone can do that, which is why they’re one of the most enthusiastic licensees of our technology.” But he admits there may be some resistance. “Whenever there is a fundamental shift in a business model, the primary resistance is going to be from the established players.”

Google has not yet responded to an Ars inquiry on the level of the company’s enthusiasm for the interception of its main revenue stream.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/kazaa-code-rises-from-ashes-to-help-isps-profit-by-zapping-rogue-links/

May 23 2012

Google announced it would be leading a campaign to notify users whose PCs were infected by the DNSChanger malware

The malware was part of a scam that came to light last November when the U.S. Department of Justice accused seven Estonian and Russian men of orchestrating several different kinds of Internet fraud schemes. Users were infected with DNSChanger after they clicked malicious links or downloaded tainted software.

The malware sent infected computers to DNS servers that redirected millions of victims to websites they had never intended to visit.

Once the faulty DNS servers were discovered, a non-profit called the Internet Systems Consortium replaced the servers with the help of a court order. Paul Vixie, founder of the ISC, estimated that 500,000 devices were still connecting to the temporary servers. When the court order expires on July 9th, those temporary servers will be shut down, leaving hundreds of thousands without Internet, unable to have their Web page requests translated by a DNS server.

ISPs have reportedly tried to alert victims but their success has been negligible, in large part (according to Google) because notifications are usually in English, and only half of the affected users speak English as a primary language. Google says it will try to notify the victims within a week in their preferred language (or the language they use with Google’s products) and provide some recommendations to clean the devices and restore them to proper DNS servers.

More:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/google-reaches-out-to-owners-of-machines-infected-with-dnschanger-malware/

May 21 2012

Google must answer EU antitrust concerns over search, copyright, advertising and how it deals with competitors

An investigation by Europe’s antitrust head Joaquin Almunia looked at whether Google gave preferential treatment to its own services in its search results.

Mr Almunia said the company must now “offer remedies” swiftly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18143812

and:

“I offer Google the possibility to come up in a matter of weeks with remedies,” said Almunia. “If Google comes up with an outline of remedies which are capable of addressing our concerns, I will instruct my staff to initiate the discussions in order to finalize a remedies package.”

Google wasn’t immediately available to comment.

The EU’s anti-trust chief said it was in the interest of all those involved in the case to reach a “quick resolution” to the four areas of concern he has identified.

The first concern relates to how Google displays links to its own vertical searches for services such as restaurants or news differently to the way it does for links to competitors.

“We are concerned that this may result in preferential treatment compared to those of competing services, which may be hurt as a consequence,” Almunia said.

The second part of the investigation, Almunia said, focused on how Google copies content from competing vertical search services and “uses it in its own offerings…using that material on its own sites without their prior authorization.”

Third, EU regulators want Google to change the deal it strikes with its partners, whereby Google dictates how websites deliver search advertisements. This obliges partners to “obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google, thus shutting out competing providers”, and could potentially impact advertising services purchased for example by online stores, online magazines or broadcasters, Almunia said.

Finally, EU anti-trust regulators found that competitors were shut out of Google’s auction-based advertising platform, AdWords, on which advertisers can bid for the placement of search ads on search result pages provided by Google.

The Internet giant will now need to submit an outline of possible remedies to address regulators’ concerns.

More:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120521-705717.html

May 18 2012

Google’s Zeitgeist party for the 1%: politicians, royalty, media moguls, internet whizzes and the odd rock star

Google loves big names. Prince Charles, David Cameron, Sir Richard Branson, Boris Johnson and James Murdoch are among those who went in previous years.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/the-google-guestlist-whos-heading-to-the-zeitgeist-7766021.html

Previously:

The graffiti theme continued inside the warehouse where soaring Rye Bar cocktail stands and bars teemed with every top-shelf tipple imaginable. All the better to pair with the bounteous McCall Associates buffet stands groaning beneath sushi and lobster bars, spit-roasted suckling pigs, pounds of fresh-sliced proscuitto and Parker’s personal favorite, Mac & Cheese copiously sprinkled with just-shaved truffles, six pounds of the pungent tuber which McCall Executive Chefs Lucas Schoemaker and Josip Martinovic had flown in from France
http://vrritti.com/2011/09/24/the-graffiti-theme-continued-inside-the-warehouse-where-soaring-rye-bar-cocktail-stands-and-bars-teemed-with-every-top-shelf-tipple-imaginable-all-the-better-to-pair-with-the-bounteous-mccall-associa/

May 12 2012

Court Upholds Google-NSA Relationship Secrecy

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the National Security Agency’s decision to withhold from the public documents confirming or denying any relationship it has with Google concerning encryption and cybersecurity.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-upheld/

May 11 2012

Scholar: regulating Google results would violate First Amendment. Did he tell Google?

Yes, because Google commissioned the paper, presumably to help ward off calls for government regulation of its search results. And as such, Google itself can do with the results whatever it wants. If others want to do something to the results, they’re violating the First Amendment

The new Google-commissioned paper, written by well-known UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and attorney Donald Falk, argues that such regulations would be preempted by the First Amendment. Google’s search engine, they write, “uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers’ judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries.”

The authors argue that this selection process is no different, constitutionally speaking, from a newspaper editor selecting wire stories to run, a guidebook deciding which attractions to feature, or a parade organizer choosing which floats to include. The courts have ruled that all of these editorial processes are fully protected by the First Amendment.

Moreover, the paper argues, the courts have held that First Amendment rights generally trump antitrust law—something of increasing concern to a dominant company like Google. “Antitrust law cannot be used to require a speaker to include certain material in its speech product,” Volokh and Falk write. They point to a 1945 case in which the courts found the Associated Press had violated antitrust laws, but stressed that its ruling did not “compel AP or its members to permit publication of anything which their ‘reason’ tells them should not be published.” Newspaper editors have the right to decide which stories should be included in their newspapers and which ones make the front page.

This suggests that Google has similarly wide discretion to decide which links and other content will appear, and in which order, in response to any given search query.

Isn’t a newspaper also publishing original stories, opinions and reviews when compared to a “crawl all, copy all” search engine?

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/scholar-regulating-google-results-would-violate-first-amendment/

May 10 2012

They All Want A Window Of Time Between Notice And Actual Removal. Time Is (Advertising) Money

Because algorithms that enable distribution of files are apparently much easier to write than algorithms that immediately remove copyright infringing files. Algorithms that immediately remove spam or malicious ads appear to be the exception to the rule…

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have drawn up a series of “principles” to guide how rights-holders should act when issuing them with requests for the removal of infringing content from search indexes as well as the responsibilities to which search engines themselves should be required to conform.

The plans were published (4-page/43KB PDF) by digital rights campaign group the Open Rights Group (ORG) who obtained details of the proposals via a freedom of information (FOI) request to the government.

Under the plans, search engines would be required to provide a way for rights-holders to inform them that their rankings display links to pirate content. Search engines would have to quickly remove content on receipt of a valid takedown notice.

Rights-holders’ takedown notices would have to be targeted in order to “specifically identify infringing content” and should only issue them to search engines “after assessing their impact on any non-infringing uses and concluding that the takedown would not have an adverse effect on such non-infringing uses”, the search engines’ plans propose.

Much more:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/10/search_engines_plans_to_combat_piracy_seek_extra_safeguards_existing_eu_law_does_not_provide/

May 10 2012

The Year Of The Ecosystems: Google agrees with Mozilla’s Windows RT browser concerns

Internet fragmentation (and as such fragmentation of the advertising landscape) is inevitable. Google can’t stop technological progress

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57431475-92/google-agrees-with-mozillas-windows-rt-browser-concerns/