9 ms·

Google and Bing to deprecate piracy websites

83 points by atomwaffel 10y ago

Touche 10y ago
Why are search engines getting involved in censorship? I understand that they need to blank out certain sites as required by law, but omitting them entirely is a bad move. When I perform a search I want it to search the web, not the approved-web.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  Because they're afraid of having iy forced down their throats. Pre-emptive complicance with regulations that don't exist yet is a way for businesses to maintain their autonomy in uncertain regulatory climates. Cf. antibiotic use in animal factory farming.
  - x1798DE 10y ago
    This is pretty brutal, because in the end these "chilling effects" versions of censorship can be much harsher than any actual government censorship (which would be constrained by the First Amendment and judicially reviewable).
  - toxican 10y ago
    Same reason the ESRB came to be. Government basically said "Figure this crap out, or we will" and publishers and devs came together to hammer out the rating system.
- CommanderData 10y ago
  Worryingly they did this completely voluntarily. To me this is a form of censorship together with the recent removal of fake news sites. The approved web is what we'll have eventually with little resistance.
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    Try this one : open google.com, bing.com and duckduckgo.com type "George Soros is " (with the trailing space) Compare and contrast
    - crystalmeph 10y ago
      That's actually really interesting. I wonder how much of it is baked into the algorithm and how much reflects the demographics of each engine's users? Edit: Wow you got a lot of downvotes fast. I honestly don't know if you're trying to advance a viewpoint or not, and I think you pointed out a very interesting split in the behavior of major engines that's worthy of taking a look at.
      - hamax 10y ago
        The comment is probably downvoted because it's a popular conspiracy theory that Google blocks bad suggestions about specific people the "liberal establishment" supports. In reality Google hides all bad suggestions about people. You can see the same difference in recommendations for "donald trump is a".
        Hydraulix989 10y ago
        More importantly, you're on a site full of liberals, and people here downvote because they disagree with somebody, not because the content itself is low quality. I, for one, think that regardless of your political views (I didn't even know who George Soros was), this comment was very high quality.
        losvedir 10y ago
        I disagree that that's the explanation in this case. I've definitely noticed the liberal bias in other comments, but this is just beating the dead horse of a conspiracy theory. I downvoted because I spent hours looking into the related theory that Google was trying to influence the election by only showing positive autosuggestions about Clinton, only to conclude that the algorithm generally doesn't autosuggest negative things or allegations of crimes. (You can try with figures like OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby, etc.) So, like the tired old discussions we have all the time (but Go doesn't have generics!, "if you're not the market, you're the product", etc), I downvoted since I don't think it was related to the discussion, particular interesting, or insightful.
- Esau 10y ago
  Between media companies and the right to be forgotten, censorship free search is a ship that has long since sailed.
  - CommanderData 10y ago
    Web freedom have gone 'softly' which is the best way to do something outrageous I suppose. Softly and slowly. Soon, posting articles about illegal states or economic boycotting will deduct your social popularity on social media. It really isn't too far away. Just replace points with 'recommendations' or 'popular' and it will be done. Social points seems too draconian. Recommendations is better. What we thought was years away has already begun.
- deelowe 10y ago
  Perhaps this has something to do with the current us administrations stance on net neutrality?
- tlow 10y ago
  I think the MPAA is a great analogy with their self-implemented rating system. Nerdponx also makes some good points.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  Why are search engines getting involved in censorship? Censorship is a strong and emotive word, and I think using it in cases like this devalues its significance. Modern search engines consider a huge number of factors, many of them subjectively chosen, when deciding what to present on their results pages. In general, they have no obligation to provide any specific service to any specific visitor. In most contexts, actively helping someone to break the law is frowned upon, or even against the law in itself. The big online services have a very cosy deal legally speaking at the moment, getting away with a lot of things that might otherwise be legally suspect because of special safe harbour rules and the like, which in turn means they can make a great deal of money by doing things automatically without the kind of human intervention and risks that would otherwise apply. It is unlikely to be in their interests to push their luck, because it isn't inherently necessary to give them such a beneficial treatment, and few people other than their shareholders would shed a tear if the climate changed and their running costs went up dramatically as a result. A more positive point is that people who complain about other restrictive measures, like DRM and the laws that make breaking it illegal, often claim that it would be more effective for content producers to offer better legal channels for accessing that content. Promoting legitimate, reliable sources of good quality content is surely in the interests of any search engine. In short, it's entirely reasonable for a major corporate player like Google or Microsoft to steer clear of supporting illegal activities and to promote legal sources for material online.
  - no_wizard 10y ago
    The DMCA (specifically safe harbor) has been a god send to businesses like Google, Facebook, many of Microsofts ventures etc.. This what AirBNB is currently using as their defense in the court cases they are having with cities, most notably San Fransisco. I read a great article about this not long ago: https://backchannel.com/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a-problem-64f5464128b6#.q6axcktub https://backchannel.com/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a... Wired also has an older article talking about this too: https://www.wired.com/2008/10/ten-years-later/ https://www.wired.com/2008/10/ten-years-later/ Its what allows so much of the internet to be the way it is, but abusing it or pushing it too hard could have serious negative consequences..this will be something to watch.
- overcast 10y ago
  So you're good with just displaying porn / alcohol / drug / cigarette ads at the top then right? Kids use google too. And don't use blockers, because that's censorship.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
romanovcode 10y ago
Yeah, someone should just create a search engine specifically for piracy websites.
- dandelion_lover 10y ago
  I guess http://yacy.net http://yacy.net should work fine.
  - CommanderData 10y ago
    Until it is blocked by ISPs. In the UK ISPs have blocked access to most torrent sites and other torrent related sites too. It feels or seem the p2p era has seen its time at least for us in the UK, because of censorship and legitimate alternatives. The lobbyist have finally influenced far enough.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      > Until it is blocked by ISPs And promptly unblocked by using a different DNS server or a VPN, both things no longer limited to the realm of the computer-savvy.
      - CommanderData 10y ago
        There's something quite telling of the need to resort to VPNs to access sites that should be accessible. A VPN isn't really a solution to the wider problem that is powerful piracy lobbyist. I see this response all the time but fail to see how it addresses the real problem.
        mixedCase 10y ago
        > I see this response all the time but fail to see how it addresses the real problem. It's being pragmatic rather than an idealist. Politics sucks, and nothing may change even if you do the right thing or in this case, specially if you do the right thing since your opponents don't give a shit about such concepts. It's sad and it's dumb, but that's human nature.
no_wizard 10y ago
I fail to see how this is censorship. They're not censoring content that you are able to access legitimately nor are they stopping you from finding content that you agree or disagree with. They aren't stopping facts from coming to light. They aren't stifling news sites. They're stifling an illegal act of procuring content that is within the confines of the current law, agree with it or not, thats all these sites allow you to do. I don't think for instance, pirate bay has ever been known for its breaking news on current events. Edit: For what its worth, these are private companies after all. So 'censorship' in terms of a legal or constitutional definition under freedom of speech, would not apply here anyway.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Also, it doesn't sound like they're making blanket removals of a blacklist, they're just factoring copyright violations into their ranking algorithms. I'm surprised they weren't already doing this, as it seems like not doing so would cross the line from "we can't be responsible for what our links point to" to "we are actively ignoring illegal use of our platform". If you don't like this, it's clearly just a symptom of copyright laws you don't like, and not really an issue with the search engines.
- noja 10y ago
  > I fail to see how this is censorship... They're not censoring content that you are able to access legitimately Legitimately doesn't come into it. censorship noun "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
  - ssully 10y ago
    Censorship doesn't come into it all all, and your provided definition helps prove that.
    - jachee 10y ago
      So, what do _you_ call redaction, removal or repression of information that would, unchecked, otherwise be more freely available?
cyborgx7 10y ago
I'm actually kinda suprised this hasn't happened already. I wish one of those distributed search engines was in a usable and useful state already. That can't be an impossible problem to solve eventhough it does seem really difficult.
unabst 10y ago
Although, the elephant in the room is most piracy happens under their roof, at least for music. I used to "steal" music on p2p. Now I just "watch" youtube. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/05/what-music-piracy-really-looks-like/ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/05/what-music-piracy...
- no_wizard 10y ago
  I would argue however that in some instances its a bit ambiguous if it is 'stealing' in that way with Youtube. While i think there are obvious examples of this (user freemusc69 certainly is NOT the legitimate copyright holder or the artist known as Kayne West, for instance), I do not believe official music video uploads like those from Vevo to youtube on behalf the recording artist or the record label are piracy in the same respect....or why would they even bother? I think the bigger problem the music industry has with youtube is semi-legitimate: They used the non-official uploads as a leverage to get them to sign en masse for Google Play Music / Youtube Music Key instead of doing the proper thing and enforcing the DMCA take downs of the music at scale. They could easily do most of this algorithmically by doing sample checks with automated software and it would likely work most of the time (plus, they could work with rights holders/publishers/record companies to maintain a 'white list' of channels that wouldn't be scanned if they're uploaded by the channel owner unless an actual DMCA complaint was filed against that channel and it turned out to be legitimate). Like most things, the real story is very complicated, and there isn't usually a good vs bad side as the water is very murky in the details.
  - syrrim 10y ago
    I believe they do what you described, but it's not perfect. In order to do it, they need to know what a song sounds like and who owns that sound. If the owner hasn't uploaded it, then they can't take down copies. They also have the problem that the copyright on a certain song might have expired, and therefore one uploader can't claim copyright to every recording (but will try). Another thing is that they will sometimes catch someone for just having a snippet of a song in a video (fair use). The result is that they can't just take every matching video down, they have to hold it in dispute, which means it will stay up for a while.
edpichler 10y ago
These corps are becoming too powerful.
tambourine_man 10y ago
DuckDuckGo just got themselves a few percent more traffic
- ddorian43 10y ago
  The use bing
  - Gaelan 10y ago
    And a few other sources, and do the final ranking themselves.
- digler999 10y ago
  I think a lot of the torrent clients already have search built in. Personally, I hope these anti-piracy measures just push stuff underground and people could just organize sneaker-net lan-parties to share content, or allow poor people to sell bootleg HDD's on the street corner just like they used to sell pirated DVD's. This day and age you can buy 30-50 terabyte NAS systems for ~1-2k. Rather than try to find a particular album, show, or movie, it's more economical to just take all of them.
kirykl 10y ago
Automated Uber vehicles will eventually feature something similar - blackout on driving to 'illegal' places
- kefka 10y ago
  Or a free ride to a police station at no extra charge, for appropriate pat down before going to high-crime location. There's a short story im not able to find, that has this very idea as a plot.
- creaghpatr 10y ago
  oh wow this is going to be a fun ethical rabbit hole to go down in a few years
- Gaelan 10y ago
  An Uber is a service, and they can and should refuse to provide service for those they wish not to support. It's murkier with Google/Tessa where the car is your property.
croon 10y ago
In another reality it's easier to offer services people want, made available by technological developments, than spend billions of dollars in lobbying to force people to use antiquated modes of purchase. I've paid Steam and Spotify for 13 and 9 years respectively to not have to do any work in getting games and music. Now if only the movie (and to a lesser extent TV) industry caught on.
Taylor_OD 10y ago
Does anyone actually find torrent sites by googleing (or binging) "torrent website"?
- lsseckman 10y ago
  That's not the point here though, is it
- overcast 10y ago
  That's how people find EVERYTHING. Which is why paying $10,000 for the dot com version of your company doesn't mean much, when you can get the .whatever for much less.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  yes. first hit lists a few
xg15 10y ago
> It means [search users] will more likely to be taken to bona fide providers rather than pirate sites, where a user’s security may be at risk. I'm 100% certain that was the main motivation for the change. /s
- Silhouette 10y ago
  It might not be the main motivation, but it's certainly a legitimate concern. Malware does get distributed via illegal content sharing sites. Those sites do get used for phishing and card fraud. While I can't say I'm full of sympathy for pirates who get hoist by their own petard, plenty of innocent people also get hurt because they don't realise the site they are visiting is not kosher. It was high up on their favourite search engine, after all! Sending their users to those dangerous sources is hardly in any search engine's best interests, regardless of any other incentives that may be at work here.
- undersuit 10y ago
  I'm 100% certain that users searching for content will still be taken to fake pirate sites still advertising non-existent downloads or hosting malicious files to hijack their computer. Exactly like it is now.
udev 10y ago
I can see Google/Bing thinking that this kind of traffic does not generate much income anyway, so might as well bow to the pressure and censor it. I think they haven't fully factored in the longer term losses they might incur when people might look for, find, and switch to an alternative good-enough uncensored search engine, e.g. Yandex.
Grue3 10y ago
These are usually spread by word of mouth, rather than Googling. Of course, Google and Microsoft own a browser and can block them client-side, but that will only cause people to switch to alternative browsers. Finally, an OS-level block or even hardware-level block could be attempted. I think we'll be heading into that direction at some point.
cr0sh 10y ago
A couple of thoughts: 1) This could open up the market again for search engines (ie - "we don't censor your search, so use us instead of the other guys". 2) How long until you try to search for "{name of research paper} pdf" and you only get links back to the pay-for-access sites for research papers? Personally I think this is BS, but I understand why they are doing it. It won't stop piracy or other illegal crap - it will just move it elsewhere, like it always has. If you want the stuff, you can find it. You always have, you always will. The second one, though, bothers me. All too often, I read an article about a research paper I want to read, only to be paywalled by one of the big research paper companies. But usually - if the paper is older than 6 months or so - I can google for it, and find a copy (sometimes a draft). In many cases, it will be off of one of the researcher's sites or blogs. Other times, it will be in an FTP archive somewhere, or linked by someone else. It really bothers me when for a research paper, I am asked to pay anywhere from $25.00 USD or more for a PDF, as an interested individual or hobbyist. Researchers are also expected to do the same, but are largely insulated from it by their institutions, who shell out big $$$ for a subscription to the services (so for the researcher, they don't see the cost - though most know about it otherwise - plus they usually have to pay thru the nose themselves just to get it on the path to publishing!). I have found that sometimes - in certain cases - finding the author(s) of a paper and emailing them asking for a copy (stating that I am a hobbyist interested in their work) generally works well enough to get a copy sent to me (and sometimes much more). Ultimately - I wouldn't be surprised to see Google and Bing do this after a few threats from the publishing companies...
andybak 10y ago
This could be positive for 'ethical' pirates. i.e. non-scam sites. Usually the more dubious torrent sites or similar seem to rank quite highly. Reverting to word of mouth could increase the likelihood of trustworthy sites maintaining their prominence. Everything above is written with the full knowledge that there is some irony in talking about ethics and trustworthiness in relation to copyright infringement. Nonetheless - I think the terms still carry some validity in context.
didibus 10y ago
Am I missing something here, because it doesn't sound like they are going to censor the content, just score them lower. Search will always be biased, it's inherent to the problem space. Word appearance, cross linking, and every other metric used to sort and score results are always going to optimize certain things over others. So in this case it's a matter of ethics, and I find it hard for anyone to morally suggest that illegal content should score higher and be considered more relevant, unless you want to debate over the legality of it.

83 points by atomwaffel 10y ago

Why are search engines getting involved in censorship? I understand that they need to blank out certain sites as required by law, but omitting them entirely is a bad move. When I perform a search I want it to search the web, not the approved-web.

nerdponx 10y ago
Because they're afraid of having iy forced down their throats. Pre-emptive complicance with regulations that don't exist yet is a way for businesses to maintain their autonomy in uncertain regulatory climates. Cf. antibiotic use in animal factory farming.
- x1798DE 10y ago
  This is pretty brutal, because in the end these "chilling effects" versions of censorship can be much harsher than any actual government censorship (which would be constrained by the First Amendment and judicially reviewable).
- toxican 10y ago
  Same reason the ESRB came to be. Government basically said "Figure this crap out, or we will" and publishers and devs came together to hammer out the rating system.
CommanderData 10y ago
Worryingly they did this completely voluntarily. To me this is a form of censorship together with the recent removal of fake news sites. The approved web is what we'll have eventually with little resistance.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  Try this one : open google.com, bing.com and duckduckgo.com type "George Soros is " (with the trailing space) Compare and contrast
  - crystalmeph 10y ago
    That's actually really interesting. I wonder how much of it is baked into the algorithm and how much reflects the demographics of each engine's users? Edit: Wow you got a lot of downvotes fast. I honestly don't know if you're trying to advance a viewpoint or not, and I think you pointed out a very interesting split in the behavior of major engines that's worthy of taking a look at.
    - hamax 10y ago
      The comment is probably downvoted because it's a popular conspiracy theory that Google blocks bad suggestions about specific people the "liberal establishment" supports. In reality Google hides all bad suggestions about people. You can see the same difference in recommendations for "donald trump is a".
      - Hydraulix989 10y ago
        More importantly, you're on a site full of liberals, and people here downvote because they disagree with somebody, not because the content itself is low quality. I, for one, think that regardless of your political views (I didn't even know who George Soros was), this comment was very high quality.
        losvedir 10y ago
        I disagree that that's the explanation in this case. I've definitely noticed the liberal bias in other comments, but this is just beating the dead horse of a conspiracy theory. I downvoted because I spent hours looking into the related theory that Google was trying to influence the election by only showing positive autosuggestions about Clinton, only to conclude that the algorithm generally doesn't autosuggest negative things or allegations of crimes. (You can try with figures like OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby, etc.) So, like the tired old discussions we have all the time (but Go doesn't have generics!, "if you're not the market, you're the product", etc), I downvoted since I don't think it was related to the discussion, particular interesting, or insightful.
Esau 10y ago
Between media companies and the right to be forgotten, censorship free search is a ship that has long since sailed.
- CommanderData 10y ago
  Web freedom have gone 'softly' which is the best way to do something outrageous I suppose. Softly and slowly. Soon, posting articles about illegal states or economic boycotting will deduct your social popularity on social media. It really isn't too far away. Just replace points with 'recommendations' or 'popular' and it will be done. Social points seems too draconian. Recommendations is better. What we thought was years away has already begun.
deelowe 10y ago
Perhaps this has something to do with the current us administrations stance on net neutrality?
tlow 10y ago
I think the MPAA is a great analogy with their self-implemented rating system. Nerdponx also makes some good points.
Silhouette 10y ago
Why are search engines getting involved in censorship? Censorship is a strong and emotive word, and I think using it in cases like this devalues its significance. Modern search engines consider a huge number of factors, many of them subjectively chosen, when deciding what to present on their results pages. In general, they have no obligation to provide any specific service to any specific visitor. In most contexts, actively helping someone to break the law is frowned upon, or even against the law in itself. The big online services have a very cosy deal legally speaking at the moment, getting away with a lot of things that might otherwise be legally suspect because of special safe harbour rules and the like, which in turn means they can make a great deal of money by doing things automatically without the kind of human intervention and risks that would otherwise apply. It is unlikely to be in their interests to push their luck, because it isn't inherently necessary to give them such a beneficial treatment, and few people other than their shareholders would shed a tear if the climate changed and their running costs went up dramatically as a result. A more positive point is that people who complain about other restrictive measures, like DRM and the laws that make breaking it illegal, often claim that it would be more effective for content producers to offer better legal channels for accessing that content. Promoting legitimate, reliable sources of good quality content is surely in the interests of any search engine. In short, it's entirely reasonable for a major corporate player like Google or Microsoft to steer clear of supporting illegal activities and to promote legal sources for material online.
- no_wizard 10y ago
  The DMCA (specifically safe harbor) has been a god send to businesses like Google, Facebook, many of Microsofts ventures etc.. This what AirBNB is currently using as their defense in the court cases they are having with cities, most notably San Fransisco. I read a great article about this not long ago: https://backchannel.com/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a-problem-64f5464128b6#.q6axcktub https://backchannel.com/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a... Wired also has an older article talking about this too: https://www.wired.com/2008/10/ten-years-later/ https://www.wired.com/2008/10/ten-years-later/ Its what allows so much of the internet to be the way it is, but abusing it or pushing it too hard could have serious negative consequences..this will be something to watch.
overcast 10y ago
So you're good with just displaying porn / alcohol / drug / cigarette ads at the top then right? Kids use google too. And don't use blockers, because that's censorship.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

romanovcode 10y ago

Yeah, someone should just create a search engine specifically for piracy websites.

dandelion_lover 10y ago
I guess http://yacy.net http://yacy.net should work fine.
- CommanderData 10y ago
  Until it is blocked by ISPs. In the UK ISPs have blocked access to most torrent sites and other torrent related sites too. It feels or seem the p2p era has seen its time at least for us in the UK, because of censorship and legitimate alternatives. The lobbyist have finally influenced far enough.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    > Until it is blocked by ISPs And promptly unblocked by using a different DNS server or a VPN, both things no longer limited to the realm of the computer-savvy.
    - CommanderData 10y ago
      There's something quite telling of the need to resort to VPNs to access sites that should be accessible. A VPN isn't really a solution to the wider problem that is powerful piracy lobbyist. I see this response all the time but fail to see how it addresses the real problem.
      - mixedCase 10y ago
        > I see this response all the time but fail to see how it addresses the real problem. It's being pragmatic rather than an idealist. Politics sucks, and nothing may change even if you do the right thing or in this case, specially if you do the right thing since your opponents don't give a shit about such concepts. It's sad and it's dumb, but that's human nature.

no_wizard 10y ago

I fail to see how this is censorship. They're not censoring content that you are able to access legitimately nor are they stopping you from finding content that you agree or disagree with. They aren't stopping facts from coming to light. They aren't stifling news sites. They're stifling an illegal act of procuring content that is within the confines of the current law, agree with it or not, thats all these sites allow you to do. I don't think for instance, pirate bay has ever been known for its breaking news on current events. Edit: For what its worth, these are private companies after all. So 'censorship' in terms of a legal or constitutional definition under freedom of speech, would not apply here anyway.

burkaman 10y ago
Also, it doesn't sound like they're making blanket removals of a blacklist, they're just factoring copyright violations into their ranking algorithms. I'm surprised they weren't already doing this, as it seems like not doing so would cross the line from "we can't be responsible for what our links point to" to "we are actively ignoring illegal use of our platform". If you don't like this, it's clearly just a symptom of copyright laws you don't like, and not really an issue with the search engines.
noja 10y ago
> I fail to see how this is censorship... They're not censoring content that you are able to access legitimately Legitimately doesn't come into it. censorship noun "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
- ssully 10y ago
  Censorship doesn't come into it all all, and your provided definition helps prove that.
  - jachee 10y ago
    So, what do _you_ call redaction, removal or repression of information that would, unchecked, otherwise be more freely available?

cyborgx7 10y ago

I'm actually kinda suprised this hasn't happened already. I wish one of those distributed search engines was in a usable and useful state already. That can't be an impossible problem to solve eventhough it does seem really difficult.

unabst 10y ago

Although, the elephant in the room is most piracy happens under their roof, at least for music. I used to "steal" music on p2p. Now I just "watch" youtube. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/05/what-music-piracy-really-looks-like/ http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/05/what-music-piracy...

no_wizard 10y ago
I would argue however that in some instances its a bit ambiguous if it is 'stealing' in that way with Youtube. While i think there are obvious examples of this (user freemusc69 certainly is NOT the legitimate copyright holder or the artist known as Kayne West, for instance), I do not believe official music video uploads like those from Vevo to youtube on behalf the recording artist or the record label are piracy in the same respect....or why would they even bother? I think the bigger problem the music industry has with youtube is semi-legitimate: They used the non-official uploads as a leverage to get them to sign en masse for Google Play Music / Youtube Music Key instead of doing the proper thing and enforcing the DMCA take downs of the music at scale. They could easily do most of this algorithmically by doing sample checks with automated software and it would likely work most of the time (plus, they could work with rights holders/publishers/record companies to maintain a 'white list' of channels that wouldn't be scanned if they're uploaded by the channel owner unless an actual DMCA complaint was filed against that channel and it turned out to be legitimate). Like most things, the real story is very complicated, and there isn't usually a good vs bad side as the water is very murky in the details.
- syrrim 10y ago
  I believe they do what you described, but it's not perfect. In order to do it, they need to know what a song sounds like and who owns that sound. If the owner hasn't uploaded it, then they can't take down copies. They also have the problem that the copyright on a certain song might have expired, and therefore one uploader can't claim copyright to every recording (but will try). Another thing is that they will sometimes catch someone for just having a snippet of a song in a video (fair use). The result is that they can't just take every matching video down, they have to hold it in dispute, which means it will stay up for a while.

edpichler 10y ago

These corps are becoming too powerful.

tambourine_man 10y ago

DuckDuckGo just got themselves a few percent more traffic

ddorian43 10y ago
The use bing
- Gaelan 10y ago
  And a few other sources, and do the final ranking themselves.
digler999 10y ago
I think a lot of the torrent clients already have search built in. Personally, I hope these anti-piracy measures just push stuff underground and people could just organize sneaker-net lan-parties to share content, or allow poor people to sell bootleg HDD's on the street corner just like they used to sell pirated DVD's. This day and age you can buy 30-50 terabyte NAS systems for ~1-2k. Rather than try to find a particular album, show, or movie, it's more economical to just take all of them.

kirykl 10y ago

Automated Uber vehicles will eventually feature something similar - blackout on driving to 'illegal' places

kefka 10y ago
Or a free ride to a police station at no extra charge, for appropriate pat down before going to high-crime location. There's a short story im not able to find, that has this very idea as a plot.
creaghpatr 10y ago
oh wow this is going to be a fun ethical rabbit hole to go down in a few years
Gaelan 10y ago
An Uber is a service, and they can and should refuse to provide service for those they wish not to support. It's murkier with Google/Tessa where the car is your property.

croon 10y ago

In another reality it's easier to offer services people want, made available by technological developments, than spend billions of dollars in lobbying to force people to use antiquated modes of purchase. I've paid Steam and Spotify for 13 and 9 years respectively to not have to do any work in getting games and music. Now if only the movie (and to a lesser extent TV) industry caught on.

Taylor_OD 10y ago

Does anyone actually find torrent sites by googleing (or binging) "torrent website"?

lsseckman 10y ago
That's not the point here though, is it
overcast 10y ago
That's how people find EVERYTHING. Which is why paying $10,000 for the dot com version of your company doesn't mean much, when you can get the .whatever for much less.
anotheryou 10y ago
yes. first hit lists a few

xg15 10y ago

> It means [search users] will more likely to be taken to bona fide providers rather than pirate sites, where a user’s security may be at risk. I'm 100% certain that was the main motivation for the change. /s

Silhouette 10y ago
It might not be the main motivation, but it's certainly a legitimate concern. Malware does get distributed via illegal content sharing sites. Those sites do get used for phishing and card fraud. While I can't say I'm full of sympathy for pirates who get hoist by their own petard, plenty of innocent people also get hurt because they don't realise the site they are visiting is not kosher. It was high up on their favourite search engine, after all! Sending their users to those dangerous sources is hardly in any search engine's best interests, regardless of any other incentives that may be at work here.
undersuit 10y ago
I'm 100% certain that users searching for content will still be taken to fake pirate sites still advertising non-existent downloads or hosting malicious files to hijack their computer. Exactly like it is now.

udev 10y ago

I can see Google/Bing thinking that this kind of traffic does not generate much income anyway, so might as well bow to the pressure and censor it. I think they haven't fully factored in the longer term losses they might incur when people might look for, find, and switch to an alternative good-enough uncensored search engine, e.g. Yandex.

Grue3 10y ago

These are usually spread by word of mouth, rather than Googling. Of course, Google and Microsoft own a browser and can block them client-side, but that will only cause people to switch to alternative browsers. Finally, an OS-level block or even hardware-level block could be attempted. I think we'll be heading into that direction at some point.

cr0sh 10y ago

A couple of thoughts: 1) This could open up the market again for search engines (ie - "we don't censor your search, so use us instead of the other guys". 2) How long until you try to search for "{name of research paper} pdf" and you only get links back to the pay-for-access sites for research papers? Personally I think this is BS, but I understand why they are doing it. It won't stop piracy or other illegal crap - it will just move it elsewhere, like it always has. If you want the stuff, you can find it. You always have, you always will. The second one, though, bothers me. All too often, I read an article about a research paper I want to read, only to be paywalled by one of the big research paper companies. But usually - if the paper is older than 6 months or so - I can google for it, and find a copy (sometimes a draft). In many cases, it will be off of one of the researcher's sites or blogs. Other times, it will be in an FTP archive somewhere, or linked by someone else. It really bothers me when for a research paper, I am asked to pay anywhere from $25.00 USD or more for a PDF, as an interested individual or hobbyist. Researchers are also expected to do the same, but are largely insulated from it by their institutions, who shell out big $$$ for a subscription to the services (so for the researcher, they don't see the cost - though most know about it otherwise - plus they usually have to pay thru the nose themselves just to get it on the path to publishing!). I have found that sometimes - in certain cases - finding the author(s) of a paper and emailing them asking for a copy (stating that I am a hobbyist interested in their work) generally works well enough to get a copy sent to me (and sometimes much more). Ultimately - I wouldn't be surprised to see Google and Bing do this after a few threats from the publishing companies...

andybak 10y ago

This could be positive for 'ethical' pirates. i.e. non-scam sites. Usually the more dubious torrent sites or similar seem to rank quite highly. Reverting to word of mouth could increase the likelihood of trustworthy sites maintaining their prominence. Everything above is written with the full knowledge that there is some irony in talking about ethics and trustworthiness in relation to copyright infringement. Nonetheless - I think the terms still carry some validity in context.

didibus 10y ago

Am I missing something here, because it doesn't sound like they are going to censor the content, just score them lower. Search will always be biased, it's inherent to the problem space. Word appearance, cross linking, and every other metric used to sort and score results are always going to optimize certain things over others. So in this case it's a matter of ethics, and I find it hard for anyone to morally suggest that illegal content should score higher and be considered more relevant, unless you want to debate over the legality of it.