5 ms·

Google: Financial Embargo Of WikiLeaks Shows How To Deal With Piracy

50 points by jwdunne 15y ago

zobzu 15y ago
"dont cut their websites, cut their food supply" sound better to me, but not good. i don't think its normal to cut ANY such service without a prior trial. Be it your bank account or website. What about just expulsion from your own house? coming next, maybe. Welcome to the world where corporations control every bit, and where you don't own anything, you're merely licensed to use it, be it software of physical items (so again, house, or anything else)
- Roritharr 15y ago
  Actually that world is reality for many people. Think about it, how many people do you know that own "their" car... most people i know just drive cars on leasing plans, live for rent, and use a company computer and cellphone most of the time. Owning something has become for many things the exception rather than the norm.
  - mc32 15y ago
    Do you think ownership was a 20th century anomaly, then? Prior to the 20th century, ownership of most real property was owned by the landed classes. And personal property was not that great for most people.
    - mladenkovacevic 15y ago
      If super-advanced aliens landed on our planet today and analyzed our history... they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between today and feudal times... there might be a blip of real ownership somewhere in the early-middle part of this century but as things are progressing it'll be back to business as usual for the aristocracy of tomorrow.
  - ippisl 15y ago
    Home ownership rate in the u.s. is 65%[1]. Considering the relative large homes people live in today, it seems a pretty decent number. Of course there's probably a large class of poor people who haven't got an option to buy decent housing(especially in a safe area) and that's a problem. Car ownership and cellphone ownership are mostly marketing driven. almost anybody can own some car and phone. [1]http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/07/real_estate/home_ownership/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/07/real_estate/home_ownership/i...
- betterth 15y ago
  "What about just expulsion from your own house?" Americans are being foreclosed on in mass, and in some instances they've been forced out of their homes wrongly by a corporation who made a mistake (here's looking at you, BoA). But with 50% of the mortgages in the country underwater, corporations taking houses is much more real than we want to admit.
  - gsmaverick 15y ago
    ``Expulsion from "your own house"`` implies you own it, if you have a large mortgage then you don't own your house the bank does. Being foreclosed upon is part of the contract not some unjust expulsion from your house. Obviously the situation of fraudulent foreclosures is a different matter.
- icebraining 15y ago
  But that essentially what she was saying: You would have a court determine that a site is infringing and serve orders on U.S.-based payment providers and advertising A court only make the decision, not the corporations.
nextparadigms 15y ago
I was kind of disappointed to hear that from a Google representative. I get the feeling that Google cares only about covering their own asses, so even if Congress votes an "evil" bill like this one, it's not their problem as long as it doesn't affect them directly. Which is fine, I suppose. You can't expect much more from a corporation. But this is why I wanted an organization like EFF to be present at the hearing. Someone who would actually care about other things, like Internet liberties, besides protecting their own profits. But those managing the hearing don't seem to care about issues like these at all. All they care about if whether the bill helps protect some jobs on one side (pro-SOPA) or helps destroy others or destroy new businesses (anti-SOPA). The Internet is much more than a zero-sum game regarding jobs, and the Government shouldn't be in the business of favoring one industry's jobs over the other. Let them deal with their problems themselves, and not use tax payer money to fix their problems, and kill or cripple another industry in the process - without even mentioning all those liberty and censorship issues.
- dspillett 15y ago
  > so even if Congress votes an "evil" bill like this one, it's not their problem as long as it doesn't affect them directly The "don't be evil" motto doesn't imply Google is going to run around fighting moral causes that don't directly affect them. I get the impression that these days their goal on that front is to be steadfastly amoral rather than pro-actively moral, except where taking a more active stance aids the company's goals.
  - bh42222 15y ago
    Nobody thinks of Switzerland as fighting evil. In general people don't look admirably on neutrality. Even less so when it's neutrality most of the time, but not so neutral when it aids my goals. Obviously there's nothing wrong with Google being what ever they like, including "evil" withing legal limits. All I am saying is, they shouldn't be surprised when most people don't admire them.
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    > The "don't be evil" motto doesn't imply Google is going to run around fighting moral causes that don't directly affect them. I think the issue here is more that Google decided to throw a lot of future organizations under the bus by endorsing a different, equally draconian measure that just happens to leave them untouched.
tensafefrogs 15y ago
I agree 100% with the last paragraph: "The EFF’s Trevor Timm said he was overall happy with Google’s arguments in the hearing, but he thought the use of WikiLeaks as an example and the company’s focus on “following the money” revealed that it was more interested in its own search business than in freedom of speech.”They seemed to be endorsing the way that payment processors and advertisers should be censoring sites,” said Timm. ”I think it really shows why they should have had more of a representation of people at the hearing. Google is looking out for its interests, but we’re looking out for the interest of everyone on the Internet. Categorizing Wikileaks as a rogue site isn’t something we agree with.”"
- y3di 15y ago
  I might be looking at this wrong, but it seemed like Google was just pointing out an example of how this tactic has been effective in the past. They don't say anything about whether they condone the use of this strategy for the specific case of Wikileaks.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    IMHO, what happened to Wikileaks is a clear attack on free speech for which the companies involved should have been penalized. That this didn't happen says a lot and Google should have chosen another way to get their point across.
  - georgemcbay 15y ago
    By offering it up as an existing alternative they are implicitly endorsing it.
- skanuj 15y ago
  What I like about this statement from Google is that it highlights that the bill as it stands doesn't differentiate between rogues and free-speech websites like WikiLeaks. I find this statement as a hidden jab, rather than just self-interest preserving statement.
zerostar07 15y ago
First, is this realistic? Most torrent sites advertise porn or malware, which none of the big advertising companies serve anyway. Wikileaks doesn't use advertising, but by popular demand they may raise money in any possible way, even in cash from selling t-shirts. Very weak argument from Google
- icebraining 15y ago
  Why would it have to be the big advertising companies? If there's ads, there's a money trail - you just cutoff at that point. Torrent sites can be hosted in some safe heaven or Tor site, but if they can't get money from the US and other "cooperative" countries, they won't last much.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    The further you go down that money trail, the more people and companies there will be traveling it. The further from your target you cut off funding, the more collateral damage you will inflict.
  - zerostar07 15y ago
    Many of the advertised companies are not us-based legally
- eogas 15y ago
  Not to mention that the best torrent sites tend not to advertise at all, and are able to stay afloat solely on user donations. This could be a key point on this whole issue. If regular people are able to organize to create, share, and distribute content between each other more efficiently and, most of all, cheaper than corporations can do it, is this really a viable business strategy anymore? EDIT: I don't think it will be very long (less than 15 years) before the content industries are dwindling, and regular people band together to replace it. It's already happening at a small scale.
brighton36 15y ago
If we were to clamp down on the Credit-card based revenue streams, that these sites will simply switch to Bincoin... (Which is fine with me, FWIW)
brighton36 15y ago
If we were to clamp down on the Credit-card based revenue streams, these sites will simply switch to Bincoin... (Which is fine with me, FWIW)
jerguismi 15y ago
Actually, this is great. If visa/mastercard/banks etc will start blocking heavily every shady business, these businesses will have to move to bitcoin and other non-goverment-controlled currencies/payment systems. In the long run this benefits us all.
- VMG 15y ago
  ... until SOPA Reloaded kills Bitcoin
  - thebigshane 15y ago
    I think this is interesting... how would they be able to do so? They can make it "illegal" I guess but there isn't a centralized entity to target. Right?
    - ansy 15y ago
      These sites that could use Bitcoin to evade the financial embargo would likely break US money laundering laws. If not in the existing form then an easily modified one. Also, eventually coins need to turn into real money to pay rent, buy food, pay for electricity. If your bank account is frozen that can be a big inconvenience to doing those things. There would have to be some kind of BitCoin for physical cash exchanges and you'd have to pay everything in cash. Not a very scalable solution for even medium sized operations.
- GHFigs 15y ago
  I don't think every "shady business" necessarily "benefits us all".
  - jerguismi 15y ago
    I was half-joking, but the idea would be that through these shady businesses bitcoin and other alternative currencies would flourish and we would finally be free from state-controlled currencies.
droithomme 15y ago
It's interesting that by threatening to attack both DNS records and payment processing without a trial or judicial review, everyone has jumped on board the "compromise" that they are willing to accept payment processing take downs of free speech sites without judicial review as long as the DNS records can be saved. Which were never a real issue anyway since you can just switch to offshore DNS servers, or switch to raw ip addresses as most of us did when wikileaks.org was taken out. It seems to me this has been the goal since the beginning. If the bill was only about attacking the finances of sites, the discussion here would have been about how this is an attack on free speech. By bundling it with another issue to be given up as a token sacrifice, a goal they weren't even really interested in to begin with, they are able to get the public to support and even advocate their original goal, which otherwise few would have been in favor of.
bad_user 15y ago
The problem with such proposals is the unfairness of it. I mean, OK, you want to "protect IP", but in case of a false positive add a note in there that the complainer should pay the affected party a sum proportional to the complainer's market cap, such as this (numbers pulled from my ass, but you get the point): - Microsoft: 1 billion USD - MPAA: 1 billion USD - RIAA: 500 million USD There you go. All is fair.
mc32 15y ago
Let's assume this is a viable method. Is this method scalable? It took concerted effort by many financial institutions and gov'ts in order to pull that off. And that was probably helped by the strong motivation afforded by their anti-cause. I don't see similar herculean efforts to deal with ordinary piracy, unless a framework were set-up. Would a society benefit from such a pan-national behemoth (assuming it would necessitate one)?
maqr 15y ago
I was watching the stream and my jaw dropped when I heard Oyama make the reference to Wikileaks. I think she was making the point that strangling the finances of "rogue" parties is very effective, and how Wikileaks was handled is a textbook example of that strategy in action. I doubt she thought it was right or ethical. She said elsewhere in the hearing that Google supports cutting off finances with direction from courts. In any case, it does prove her point that cutting off finances is an effective strategy and can already be done without SOPA (or other new legislation).

50 points by jwdunne 15y ago

zobzu 15y ago

"dont cut their websites, cut their food supply" sound better to me, but not good. i don't think its normal to cut ANY such service without a prior trial. Be it your bank account or website. What about just expulsion from your own house? coming next, maybe. Welcome to the world where corporations control every bit, and where you don't own anything, you're merely licensed to use it, be it software of physical items (so again, house, or anything else)

Roritharr 15y ago
Actually that world is reality for many people. Think about it, how many people do you know that own "their" car... most people i know just drive cars on leasing plans, live for rent, and use a company computer and cellphone most of the time. Owning something has become for many things the exception rather than the norm.
- mc32 15y ago
  Do you think ownership was a 20th century anomaly, then? Prior to the 20th century, ownership of most real property was owned by the landed classes. And personal property was not that great for most people.
  - mladenkovacevic 15y ago
    If super-advanced aliens landed on our planet today and analyzed our history... they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between today and feudal times... there might be a blip of real ownership somewhere in the early-middle part of this century but as things are progressing it'll be back to business as usual for the aristocracy of tomorrow.
- ippisl 15y ago
  Home ownership rate in the u.s. is 65%[1]. Considering the relative large homes people live in today, it seems a pretty decent number. Of course there's probably a large class of poor people who haven't got an option to buy decent housing(especially in a safe area) and that's a problem. Car ownership and cellphone ownership are mostly marketing driven. almost anybody can own some car and phone. [1]http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/07/real_estate/home_ownership/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/07/real_estate/home_ownership/i...
betterth 15y ago
"What about just expulsion from your own house?" Americans are being foreclosed on in mass, and in some instances they've been forced out of their homes wrongly by a corporation who made a mistake (here's looking at you, BoA). But with 50% of the mortgages in the country underwater, corporations taking houses is much more real than we want to admit.
- gsmaverick 15y ago
  ``Expulsion from "your own house"`` implies you own it, if you have a large mortgage then you don't own your house the bank does. Being foreclosed upon is part of the contract not some unjust expulsion from your house. Obviously the situation of fraudulent foreclosures is a different matter.
icebraining 15y ago
But that essentially what she was saying: You would have a court determine that a site is infringing and serve orders on U.S.-based payment providers and advertising A court only make the decision, not the corporations.

nextparadigms 15y ago

I was kind of disappointed to hear that from a Google representative. I get the feeling that Google cares only about covering their own asses, so even if Congress votes an "evil" bill like this one, it's not their problem as long as it doesn't affect them directly. Which is fine, I suppose. You can't expect much more from a corporation. But this is why I wanted an organization like EFF to be present at the hearing. Someone who would actually care about other things, like Internet liberties, besides protecting their own profits. But those managing the hearing don't seem to care about issues like these at all. All they care about if whether the bill helps protect some jobs on one side (pro-SOPA) or helps destroy others or destroy new businesses (anti-SOPA). The Internet is much more than a zero-sum game regarding jobs, and the Government shouldn't be in the business of favoring one industry's jobs over the other. Let them deal with their problems themselves, and not use tax payer money to fix their problems, and kill or cripple another industry in the process - without even mentioning all those liberty and censorship issues.

dspillett 15y ago
> so even if Congress votes an "evil" bill like this one, it's not their problem as long as it doesn't affect them directly The "don't be evil" motto doesn't imply Google is going to run around fighting moral causes that don't directly affect them. I get the impression that these days their goal on that front is to be steadfastly amoral rather than pro-actively moral, except where taking a more active stance aids the company's goals.
- bh42222 15y ago
  Nobody thinks of Switzerland as fighting evil. In general people don't look admirably on neutrality. Even less so when it's neutrality most of the time, but not so neutral when it aids my goals. Obviously there's nothing wrong with Google being what ever they like, including "evil" withing legal limits. All I am saying is, they shouldn't be surprised when most people don't admire them.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > The "don't be evil" motto doesn't imply Google is going to run around fighting moral causes that don't directly affect them. I think the issue here is more that Google decided to throw a lot of future organizations under the bus by endorsing a different, equally draconian measure that just happens to leave them untouched.

tensafefrogs 15y ago

I agree 100% with the last paragraph: "The EFF’s Trevor Timm said he was overall happy with Google’s arguments in the hearing, but he thought the use of WikiLeaks as an example and the company’s focus on “following the money” revealed that it was more interested in its own search business than in freedom of speech.”They seemed to be endorsing the way that payment processors and advertisers should be censoring sites,” said Timm. ”I think it really shows why they should have had more of a representation of people at the hearing. Google is looking out for its interests, but we’re looking out for the interest of everyone on the Internet. Categorizing Wikileaks as a rogue site isn’t something we agree with.”"

y3di 15y ago
I might be looking at this wrong, but it seemed like Google was just pointing out an example of how this tactic has been effective in the past. They don't say anything about whether they condone the use of this strategy for the specific case of Wikileaks.
- bad_user 15y ago
  IMHO, what happened to Wikileaks is a clear attack on free speech for which the companies involved should have been penalized. That this didn't happen says a lot and Google should have chosen another way to get their point across.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  By offering it up as an existing alternative they are implicitly endorsing it.
skanuj 15y ago
What I like about this statement from Google is that it highlights that the bill as it stands doesn't differentiate between rogues and free-speech websites like WikiLeaks. I find this statement as a hidden jab, rather than just self-interest preserving statement.

zerostar07 15y ago

First, is this realistic? Most torrent sites advertise porn or malware, which none of the big advertising companies serve anyway. Wikileaks doesn't use advertising, but by popular demand they may raise money in any possible way, even in cash from selling t-shirts. Very weak argument from Google

icebraining 15y ago
Why would it have to be the big advertising companies? If there's ads, there's a money trail - you just cutoff at that point. Torrent sites can be hosted in some safe heaven or Tor site, but if they can't get money from the US and other "cooperative" countries, they won't last much.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  The further you go down that money trail, the more people and companies there will be traveling it. The further from your target you cut off funding, the more collateral damage you will inflict.
- zerostar07 15y ago
  Many of the advertised companies are not us-based legally
eogas 15y ago
Not to mention that the best torrent sites tend not to advertise at all, and are able to stay afloat solely on user donations. This could be a key point on this whole issue. If regular people are able to organize to create, share, and distribute content between each other more efficiently and, most of all, cheaper than corporations can do it, is this really a viable business strategy anymore? EDIT: I don't think it will be very long (less than 15 years) before the content industries are dwindling, and regular people band together to replace it. It's already happening at a small scale.

brighton36 15y ago

If we were to clamp down on the Credit-card based revenue streams, that these sites will simply switch to Bincoin... (Which is fine with me, FWIW)

brighton36 15y ago

If we were to clamp down on the Credit-card based revenue streams, these sites will simply switch to Bincoin... (Which is fine with me, FWIW)

jerguismi 15y ago

Actually, this is great. If visa/mastercard/banks etc will start blocking heavily every shady business, these businesses will have to move to bitcoin and other non-goverment-controlled currencies/payment systems. In the long run this benefits us all.

VMG 15y ago
... until SOPA Reloaded kills Bitcoin
- thebigshane 15y ago
  I think this is interesting... how would they be able to do so? They can make it "illegal" I guess but there isn't a centralized entity to target. Right?
  - ansy 15y ago
    These sites that could use Bitcoin to evade the financial embargo would likely break US money laundering laws. If not in the existing form then an easily modified one. Also, eventually coins need to turn into real money to pay rent, buy food, pay for electricity. If your bank account is frozen that can be a big inconvenience to doing those things. There would have to be some kind of BitCoin for physical cash exchanges and you'd have to pay everything in cash. Not a very scalable solution for even medium sized operations.
GHFigs 15y ago
I don't think every "shady business" necessarily "benefits us all".
- jerguismi 15y ago
  I was half-joking, but the idea would be that through these shady businesses bitcoin and other alternative currencies would flourish and we would finally be free from state-controlled currencies.

droithomme 15y ago

It's interesting that by threatening to attack both DNS records and payment processing without a trial or judicial review, everyone has jumped on board the "compromise" that they are willing to accept payment processing take downs of free speech sites without judicial review as long as the DNS records can be saved. Which were never a real issue anyway since you can just switch to offshore DNS servers, or switch to raw ip addresses as most of us did when wikileaks.org was taken out. It seems to me this has been the goal since the beginning. If the bill was only about attacking the finances of sites, the discussion here would have been about how this is an attack on free speech. By bundling it with another issue to be given up as a token sacrifice, a goal they weren't even really interested in to begin with, they are able to get the public to support and even advocate their original goal, which otherwise few would have been in favor of.

bad_user 15y ago

The problem with such proposals is the unfairness of it. I mean, OK, you want to "protect IP", but in case of a false positive add a note in there that the complainer should pay the affected party a sum proportional to the complainer's market cap, such as this (numbers pulled from my ass, but you get the point): - Microsoft: 1 billion USD - MPAA: 1 billion USD - RIAA: 500 million USD There you go. All is fair.

mc32 15y ago

Let's assume this is a viable method. Is this method scalable? It took concerted effort by many financial institutions and gov'ts in order to pull that off. And that was probably helped by the strong motivation afforded by their anti-cause. I don't see similar herculean efforts to deal with ordinary piracy, unless a framework were set-up. Would a society benefit from such a pan-national behemoth (assuming it would necessitate one)?

maqr 15y ago

I was watching the stream and my jaw dropped when I heard Oyama make the reference to Wikileaks. I think she was making the point that strangling the finances of "rogue" parties is very effective, and how Wikileaks was handled is a textbook example of that strategy in action. I doubt she thought it was right or ethical. She said elsewhere in the hearing that Google supports cutting off finances with direction from courts. In any case, it does prove her point that cutting off finances is an effective strategy and can already be done without SOPA (or other new legislation).