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Google disables AdSense account of user for sharing free book via torrent

170 points by jlengrand 14y ago

phaylon 14y ago
From the book author's blog it seems more that his account was flagged because he linked to his book on The Pirate Bay and Demonoid.
- Natsu 14y ago
  Yeah. As much as I hate the policy, there are a ton of people just waiting to sue Google over infringement or inducement, so they probably feel that they had to have blanket bans on AdSense for people linking to the Pirate Bay.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    TPB is not an inherently illegal site. Legal content can be offered through torrents and TPB. But the question is, why is Google acting like judge and executioner? I won't even go into the fact that I think linking to no matter what should never be illegal. I'm starting to get tired of Google favoring the label and studio cartel and being against the regular people through Youtube's ContentID system and through increasingly more stuff like this, just because they'd rather be on the safe side.
    - Natsu 14y ago
      > But the question is, why is Google acting like judge and executioner? Because there are lots of people who make sites that are essentially pirate content + ads and there are lots of people who will sue Google if they find them sending money to a pirate site. I'm assuming this was an algorithmic mistake, but you can understand how it's hard for them to research the copyright status of each thing. I mean, hypothetically, what if this guy was lying about it being his own work, or the copyright was disputed by someone? Google ends up in the middle of it and there's no real upside for them, because there are a lot of people who are quite simply out to get Google over copyrights.
  - duskwuff 14y ago
    > There are a ton of people just waiting to sue Google over infringement or inducement, so they probably feel that they had to have blanket bans on AdSense for people linking to the Pirate Bay. It's not even a matter of Google being sued -- sites that link to pirated content are frequently sites that advertisers don't want their ads to run on, even if those sites are perfectly legal.
mcherm 14y ago
This again points out the REAL problem with customer relations that companies like Google have. I would have no objection if Google banned him, then he appealed, explaining the situation, and they reinstated him. But since Google fails to provide a WAY to communicate to a human and appeal a situation, it leads to absurd outcomes like this one.
- smoyer 14y ago
  I agree completely ... unless you get on the front page of HN and one of the Googlers here (e.g. @Matt_Cutts) notices, you probably won't find anyone to help you.
- libria 14y ago
  Thankfully, the Hacker News front page doubles as a Google Customer Service Department quite well. We recommend you use inflammatory titles to expedite your case.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    >We recommend you use inflammatory titles to expedite your case. No "we" don't.
    - simon 14y ago
      It does appear to be a form of rewarded behavior, so there is an implicit approval.
- paulhauggis 14y ago
  Amazon is the same way. I don't understand why so many people base their entire businesses on companies that don't even give them any kind of real support...especially when you are making them money.
  - bad_user 14y ago
    What problems have you had with Amazon? Whenever I've had problems with AWS, they replied promptly.
sergiotapia 14y ago
For a non-bullshit advertising provider I highly recommend http://www.projectwonderful.com/ http://www.projectwonderful.com/ You create an ad box with them, they give you a snippet to past anywhere on your site. People bid a-la eBay for any amount of time they want to display an ad on that box and you rake in money. You can then transfer that money via Bank or Paypal, couldn't be simpler and it has gasp customer service! Fuck Google.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Out of curiosity do you know any stats on ad earnings from them vs Google Ads? As I'd imagine for the majority of people they're looking for maximum return, and willing to cope with the lack of customer service. (I have no stake in it, I use no ad networks but I am genuinely curious).
  - mistercow 14y ago
    The problem is that with AdSense, there is no "coping". The lack of customer service means that once their algorithms decide that you are breaking the rules, your account is just gone, along with any money earned since the last payout. If you're going to rely on AdSense for revenue, you had better have another ad service in the chamber.
- chmodd 14y ago
  The problem with AdSense is not that there are no alternatives (there are plenty - chitika, adbrite etc.) The problem is that those alternatives pay way, way less. All the customer service in the world isn't going to help if your website makes 10x more with AdSense than with any other ad broker.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    I don't know about chitika, but I used adBrite and never saw a dime from it, whereas I was able to make a modest amount with Project Wonderful. Not as much as AdSense, but unlike AdSense, Project Wonderful never accused me of fraud and then ran off with over $300 that I had earned through their service. If I had known how Google would treat me, I never would have signed up, regardless of how much I made in the meantime.
mtgx 14y ago
It seems Google is becoming dead serious about including the "copyright infringement" factor in their algorithms. I can only see this causing more and more PR problems for Google down the line.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Only if they don't sort out a better appeals process.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    They've been unfairly banning people for years now with no appeals process whatsoever, and the effect it's had on their PR so far has been minimal. They make good products, and they have made "not being evil" part of their image, and those are the things that people care about. Whether or not they actually live up to that image is a marginal concern.
lazyjones 14y ago
Probably a good example for "how to scale" (a corporation) ... Apparently that's the kind of tradeoffs one has to accept in order to become a behemoth like Google.
conradfr 14y ago
Well I still don't understand why they banned me from AdSense and stole my money, at least this guy seems to know why ...
- mistercow 14y ago
  Did they accuse you of click fraud? That's what happened to me. Some research uncovered that all it really takes is one person who's angry at you to go on your site and click your ads repeatedly. If you search around, you can find stories of disgruntled readers, angry exes, you name it, and none of them have happy endings. If you knew the risk in advance, you could set up measures to prevent it, but of course those measures would be in violation of the AdSense TOS.
  - conradfr 14y ago
    They just said it was "at risk to generate fraudulent activity" (loose translation). But AdSense was deactivated for years on my website, and there was like 20€ sitting on it (which was too low to be transfered). Oh well, I will use something else for my upcoming real websites.
    - mistercow 14y ago
      >They just said it was "at risk to generate fraudulent activity" (loose translation). Wow, so they didn't even accuse you of fraud... just "pre-fraud". It's especially funny since every active AdSense account is one malicious visitor away from "fraudulent activity". I'm not sure how you can be more "at risk" than that.
      - gizzlon 14y ago
        Any one else reminded of Minority Report? The google precogs found you guilty of future crime..
      - joshuahedlund 14y ago
        > one malicious visitor away from "fraudulent activity" I worry sometimes about the potential for malicious drive-bys. I've thought about trying to set up some code that registers when someone clicks on an ad and and then shows a non-ad in its place for the next X page loads to try to prevent that sort of thing. Not sure if it would work, though.
lewisflude 14y ago
As an aside - do you feel Google's customer service will improve over the next few years? How would it benefit them (considering they already hold a monopoly over the market)?
JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
What tracker was he using? If he was running his own tracker, then this is BS. If he was using someone else's that is typically associated with piracy (TPB) then I would understand Google for taking down his account. Edit: He is using pirate bay and demonoid. I guess you are the company you keep in this situation. Maybe Google wouldn't have caught on, or would have been more forgiving if the torrent was tracked on the same domain name?
- danielweber 14y ago
  Yeah, claiming he lost for putting his own book "on a torrent" is burying the lede. Google isn't going to touch The Pirate Bay with a ten foot pole.
  - jlengrand 14y ago
    Funny, cause I changed the sentence last minute. I had put "on TPB" first, but changed especially not to be said that I wanted to point to TPB especially :).
  - ommunist 14y ago
    Is that so? Entering thepiratebay.org to Google search returns very relevant results.
driverdan 14y ago
Original, non-blogspam article: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120923/22351120487/googles-copyright-crackdown-punishes-author-torrenting-his-own-book.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120923/22351120487/google...
no_gravity 14y ago
Google disabled Adsense for one of my domains because in a Forum on that domain a user explains what a "blow job" is. Which is related to a movie the discussion is about. The forum in question does not contain adsense adverts and the domain is not at all related to adult topics. They blocked the whole domain anyhow. Giving that one Forum page as the reason. Even though the domain has tons of content and thousands of other discussions. I appealed but only got a generic reply not related to the situation. So what does that mean? No adsense if anywhere on your domain there is a forum?
- vlasta2 14y ago
  It seems like I am in a similar situation - having a site with user submitted icons and mouse cursors. And I got an email informing me they will not show ads on that site. The page mentioned in the email contained an icon of the "pedobear"... (see wikipedia) Oh, Google...
- whileonebegin 14y ago
  Not to turn this into a "Google banned my Adsense account" thread, because there are plenty of those on the DP forums etc, but I had the same thing happen for an equally absurd reason. Google mysteriously banned my account because someone on the same IP apparently got their account banned due to a domain expiring. The whole thing makes no sense. I've even heard horror stories of someone moving into an apartment where the prior owner had his Adsense account banned (through coincidence, both tenants were webmasters), and upon the new tenant logging into his Adsense account from the new apartment's IP address, his account was subsequently banned, by relation. I'm surprised Google is able to continue making money when so many web sites are outright banned for no just-cause. Then again, income from Adsense has dropped substantially over recent years, so I'm not sure how many users still click those ads.
Matt_Cutts 14y ago
Looks like Google re-enabled this account a few hours after we saw the article on Techdirt: http://python-ebook.blogspot.com/2012/09/google-ads-are-back.html http://python-ebook.blogspot.com/2012/09/google-ads-are-back... It's unusual for an author to post a torrent link to his own book, and so I understand that this happened, but it's an unfortunate mistake in my opinion. I hope the team will take the situation as a chance to see whether they could have handled things differently.
- danielweber 14y ago
  And as he discusses there, he's no longer saying "go grab it on The Pirate Bay." I don't see Google having any problem with giving away your own stuff, or even giving away your stuff via torrent (despite the misleading headline here on HN). The problem is linking to TPB, which Google wants no part of.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    I don't think the title is misleading. It's a pretty naive and obvious way of having a free book. There is nothing wrong with it, except in the eyes of google's automatons.
- mindstab 14y ago
  I don't know about that. More[1] and more[2] authors[3] these days are giving[4] away their books for free online as a form of advertising. 1: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm 2: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera... 3: http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/free-ebook-version http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/free-ebook-version 4. http://craphound.com/rotn/download/ http://craphound.com/rotn/download/
  - stfu 14y ago
    Not to forget that even mainstream bestselling authors actively endorse and co-operate with Piratebay: http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-supports-the-pirate-bay-090415/ http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-supports-the-pirate-bay...
zackmorris 14y ago
The answer to this is pretty simple and long overdue. We need writer's guilds and developer's guilds, basically unions that protect the content producers from abuse by large corporations. All it takes is one lawsuit to shut down an ad service or app store. We forget our power as citizens or opt out of it/throw it away so easily. This is traditionally how environmental and other groups have stopped corporations from impinging on the public's rights. I'm not saying this is ideal, just, it's how it works because the corporations will never, ever change unless we force them to.
- click170 14y ago
  I agree, it's an interesting and appealing idea. I think one of the biggest obstacles to that at the moment, at least in the US, is the arguably earned reputation that some unions have as being profiteering thugs, if not outright extentions of the mob itself. Those bad unions have spoiled it for the good ones (and there are good ones).
- ommunist 14y ago
  Shutting down Google could be a good line in the CV of a legal practitioner.
alan_cx 14y ago
But, em, yet Google still have a custom search engine for torrents.
ommunist 14y ago
Shall Google ban WoW for using torrent for distributing their own game patches?

170 points by jlengrand 14y ago

From the book author's blog it seems more that his account was flagged because he linked to his book on The Pirate Bay and Demonoid.

Natsu 14y ago
Yeah. As much as I hate the policy, there are a ton of people just waiting to sue Google over infringement or inducement, so they probably feel that they had to have blanket bans on AdSense for people linking to the Pirate Bay.
- mtgx 14y ago
  TPB is not an inherently illegal site. Legal content can be offered through torrents and TPB. But the question is, why is Google acting like judge and executioner? I won't even go into the fact that I think linking to no matter what should never be illegal. I'm starting to get tired of Google favoring the label and studio cartel and being against the regular people through Youtube's ContentID system and through increasingly more stuff like this, just because they'd rather be on the safe side.
  - Natsu 14y ago
    > But the question is, why is Google acting like judge and executioner? Because there are lots of people who make sites that are essentially pirate content + ads and there are lots of people who will sue Google if they find them sending money to a pirate site. I'm assuming this was an algorithmic mistake, but you can understand how it's hard for them to research the copyright status of each thing. I mean, hypothetically, what if this guy was lying about it being his own work, or the copyright was disputed by someone? Google ends up in the middle of it and there's no real upside for them, because there are a lot of people who are quite simply out to get Google over copyrights.
- duskwuff 14y ago
  > There are a ton of people just waiting to sue Google over infringement or inducement, so they probably feel that they had to have blanket bans on AdSense for people linking to the Pirate Bay. It's not even a matter of Google being sued -- sites that link to pirated content are frequently sites that advertisers don't want their ads to run on, even if those sites are perfectly legal.

mcherm 14y ago

This again points out the REAL problem with customer relations that companies like Google have. I would have no objection if Google banned him, then he appealed, explaining the situation, and they reinstated him. But since Google fails to provide a WAY to communicate to a human and appeal a situation, it leads to absurd outcomes like this one.

smoyer 14y ago
I agree completely ... unless you get on the front page of HN and one of the Googlers here (e.g. @Matt_Cutts) notices, you probably won't find anyone to help you.
libria 14y ago
Thankfully, the Hacker News front page doubles as a Google Customer Service Department quite well. We recommend you use inflammatory titles to expedite your case.
- hollerith 14y ago
  >We recommend you use inflammatory titles to expedite your case. No "we" don't.
  - simon 14y ago
    It does appear to be a form of rewarded behavior, so there is an implicit approval.
paulhauggis 14y ago
Amazon is the same way. I don't understand why so many people base their entire businesses on companies that don't even give them any kind of real support...especially when you are making them money.
- bad_user 14y ago
  What problems have you had with Amazon? Whenever I've had problems with AWS, they replied promptly.

sergiotapia 14y ago

For a non-bullshit advertising provider I highly recommend http://www.projectwonderful.com/ http://www.projectwonderful.com/ You create an ad box with them, they give you a snippet to past anywhere on your site. People bid a-la eBay for any amount of time they want to display an ad on that box and you rake in money. You can then transfer that money via Bank or Paypal, couldn't be simpler and it has gasp customer service! Fuck Google.

nicholassmith 14y ago
Out of curiosity do you know any stats on ad earnings from them vs Google Ads? As I'd imagine for the majority of people they're looking for maximum return, and willing to cope with the lack of customer service. (I have no stake in it, I use no ad networks but I am genuinely curious).
- mistercow 14y ago
  The problem is that with AdSense, there is no "coping". The lack of customer service means that once their algorithms decide that you are breaking the rules, your account is just gone, along with any money earned since the last payout. If you're going to rely on AdSense for revenue, you had better have another ad service in the chamber.
chmodd 14y ago
The problem with AdSense is not that there are no alternatives (there are plenty - chitika, adbrite etc.) The problem is that those alternatives pay way, way less. All the customer service in the world isn't going to help if your website makes 10x more with AdSense than with any other ad broker.
- mistercow 14y ago
  I don't know about chitika, but I used adBrite and never saw a dime from it, whereas I was able to make a modest amount with Project Wonderful. Not as much as AdSense, but unlike AdSense, Project Wonderful never accused me of fraud and then ran off with over $300 that I had earned through their service. If I had known how Google would treat me, I never would have signed up, regardless of how much I made in the meantime.

mtgx 14y ago

It seems Google is becoming dead serious about including the "copyright infringement" factor in their algorithms. I can only see this causing more and more PR problems for Google down the line.

DanBC 14y ago
Only if they don't sort out a better appeals process.
- mistercow 14y ago
  They've been unfairly banning people for years now with no appeals process whatsoever, and the effect it's had on their PR so far has been minimal. They make good products, and they have made "not being evil" part of their image, and those are the things that people care about. Whether or not they actually live up to that image is a marginal concern.

lazyjones 14y ago

Probably a good example for "how to scale" (a corporation) ... Apparently that's the kind of tradeoffs one has to accept in order to become a behemoth like Google.

conradfr 14y ago

Well I still don't understand why they banned me from AdSense and stole my money, at least this guy seems to know why ...

mistercow 14y ago
Did they accuse you of click fraud? That's what happened to me. Some research uncovered that all it really takes is one person who's angry at you to go on your site and click your ads repeatedly. If you search around, you can find stories of disgruntled readers, angry exes, you name it, and none of them have happy endings. If you knew the risk in advance, you could set up measures to prevent it, but of course those measures would be in violation of the AdSense TOS.
- conradfr 14y ago
  They just said it was "at risk to generate fraudulent activity" (loose translation). But AdSense was deactivated for years on my website, and there was like 20€ sitting on it (which was too low to be transfered). Oh well, I will use something else for my upcoming real websites.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >They just said it was "at risk to generate fraudulent activity" (loose translation). Wow, so they didn't even accuse you of fraud... just "pre-fraud". It's especially funny since every active AdSense account is one malicious visitor away from "fraudulent activity". I'm not sure how you can be more "at risk" than that.
    - gizzlon 14y ago
      Any one else reminded of Minority Report? The google precogs found you guilty of future crime..
    - joshuahedlund 14y ago
      > one malicious visitor away from "fraudulent activity" I worry sometimes about the potential for malicious drive-bys. I've thought about trying to set up some code that registers when someone clicks on an ad and and then shows a non-ad in its place for the next X page loads to try to prevent that sort of thing. Not sure if it would work, though.

lewisflude 14y ago

As an aside - do you feel Google's customer service will improve over the next few years? How would it benefit them (considering they already hold a monopoly over the market)?

JimmaDaRustla 14y ago

What tracker was he using? If he was running his own tracker, then this is BS. If he was using someone else's that is typically associated with piracy (TPB) then I would understand Google for taking down his account. Edit: He is using pirate bay and demonoid. I guess you are the company you keep in this situation. Maybe Google wouldn't have caught on, or would have been more forgiving if the torrent was tracked on the same domain name?

danielweber 14y ago
Yeah, claiming he lost for putting his own book "on a torrent" is burying the lede. Google isn't going to touch The Pirate Bay with a ten foot pole.
- jlengrand 14y ago
  Funny, cause I changed the sentence last minute. I had put "on TPB" first, but changed especially not to be said that I wanted to point to TPB especially :).
- ommunist 14y ago
  Is that so? Entering thepiratebay.org to Google search returns very relevant results.

driverdan 14y ago

Original, non-blogspam article: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120923/22351120487/googles-copyright-crackdown-punishes-author-torrenting-his-own-book.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120923/22351120487/google...

no_gravity 14y ago

Google disabled Adsense for one of my domains because in a Forum on that domain a user explains what a "blow job" is. Which is related to a movie the discussion is about. The forum in question does not contain adsense adverts and the domain is not at all related to adult topics. They blocked the whole domain anyhow. Giving that one Forum page as the reason. Even though the domain has tons of content and thousands of other discussions. I appealed but only got a generic reply not related to the situation. So what does that mean? No adsense if anywhere on your domain there is a forum?

vlasta2 14y ago
It seems like I am in a similar situation - having a site with user submitted icons and mouse cursors. And I got an email informing me they will not show ads on that site. The page mentioned in the email contained an icon of the "pedobear"... (see wikipedia) Oh, Google...
whileonebegin 14y ago
Not to turn this into a "Google banned my Adsense account" thread, because there are plenty of those on the DP forums etc, but I had the same thing happen for an equally absurd reason. Google mysteriously banned my account because someone on the same IP apparently got their account banned due to a domain expiring. The whole thing makes no sense. I've even heard horror stories of someone moving into an apartment where the prior owner had his Adsense account banned (through coincidence, both tenants were webmasters), and upon the new tenant logging into his Adsense account from the new apartment's IP address, his account was subsequently banned, by relation. I'm surprised Google is able to continue making money when so many web sites are outright banned for no just-cause. Then again, income from Adsense has dropped substantially over recent years, so I'm not sure how many users still click those ads.

Matt_Cutts 14y ago

Looks like Google re-enabled this account a few hours after we saw the article on Techdirt: http://python-ebook.blogspot.com/2012/09/google-ads-are-back.html http://python-ebook.blogspot.com/2012/09/google-ads-are-back... It's unusual for an author to post a torrent link to his own book, and so I understand that this happened, but it's an unfortunate mistake in my opinion. I hope the team will take the situation as a chance to see whether they could have handled things differently.

danielweber 14y ago
And as he discusses there, he's no longer saying "go grab it on The Pirate Bay." I don't see Google having any problem with giving away your own stuff, or even giving away your stuff via torrent (despite the misleading headline here on HN). The problem is linking to TPB, which Google wants no part of.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  I don't think the title is misleading. It's a pretty naive and obvious way of having a free book. There is nothing wrong with it, except in the eyes of google's automatons.
mindstab 14y ago
I don't know about that. More[1] and more[2] authors[3] these days are giving[4] away their books for free online as a form of advertising. 1: http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm 2: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera... 3: http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/free-ebook-version http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/ventus/free-ebook-version 4. http://craphound.com/rotn/download/ http://craphound.com/rotn/download/
- stfu 14y ago
  Not to forget that even mainstream bestselling authors actively endorse and co-operate with Piratebay: http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-supports-the-pirate-bay-090415/ http://torrentfreak.com/paulo-coelho-supports-the-pirate-bay...

zackmorris 14y ago

The answer to this is pretty simple and long overdue. We need writer's guilds and developer's guilds, basically unions that protect the content producers from abuse by large corporations. All it takes is one lawsuit to shut down an ad service or app store. We forget our power as citizens or opt out of it/throw it away so easily. This is traditionally how environmental and other groups have stopped corporations from impinging on the public's rights. I'm not saying this is ideal, just, it's how it works because the corporations will never, ever change unless we force them to.

click170 14y ago
I agree, it's an interesting and appealing idea. I think one of the biggest obstacles to that at the moment, at least in the US, is the arguably earned reputation that some unions have as being profiteering thugs, if not outright extentions of the mob itself. Those bad unions have spoiled it for the good ones (and there are good ones).
ommunist 14y ago
Shutting down Google could be a good line in the CV of a legal practitioner.

alan_cx 14y ago

But, em, yet Google still have a custom search engine for torrents.

ommunist 14y ago

Shall Google ban WoW for using torrent for distributing their own game patches?