4 ms·

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 ht

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...
- Matt_Cutts 14y ago
  I agree that more authors are giving away their books online for free (John Scalzi, for example). My point is that it's unusual for authors to do it by pointing to a torrent. Of the four examples you mentioned, the authors provided links in a wide variety of formats (ePub, HTML, TXT, Mobi), but I didn't see any torrent links. All the links I saw in a fast scan were direct download links. I think that's much more common than an author posting a link to a torrent.
  - mbrubeck 14y ago
    It's less common but hardly unprecedented. 1. Charles Stross (one of the four examples above) used to point readers to BitTorrent for his free book downloads: http://web.archive.org/web/20090514034859/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/accelerando/ http://web.archive.org/web/20090514034859/http://www.antipop... (And he complains about automated scanners flagging legit files as copyright violations: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbeciles.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbecile... ) 2. Unni Drougge use The Pirate bay to post a torrent of an audio version of her best-selling novel: http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1029.html http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1029.html 3. Larry Lessig releases his book "Free Culture" as a torrent: http://lessig.org/blog/2004/03/free_culture_is.html http://lessig.org/blog/2004/03/free_culture_is.html (And of course, a USC student had his network account disabled for downloading this completely legal torrent: http://boingboing.net/2006/08/25/universities-put-hol.html http://boingboing.net/2006/08/25/universities-put-hol.html ) 4. Dan Morrill posts a torrent link to his book about selling e-books: http://torrentfreak.com/my-book-please-081017/ http://torrentfreak.com/my-book-please-081017/ 5. Megan Lisa Jones self-publishes a novel through BitTorrent: http://ibla.us/2011/content/thoughts-on-the-bittorrent-promotion-and-monetizing-a-book/ http://ibla.us/2011/content/thoughts-on-the-bittorrent-promo... 6. Caris O'Malley posts a pirate torrent link of his own novel and encourages readers to download it: http://hipsterlibrarian.com/2011/08/04/illegally-download-the-egg-said-nothing-today/ http://hipsterlibrarian.com/2011/08/04/illegally-download-th... 7. Wired editor Chris Anderson links to a torrent search for his book "The Long Tail": http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/02/books_want_to_b.html http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/02/books_want_to_...
    - 14y ago
dustingetz 14y ago
what plans does google have to curb these false positives triggering actions on people's accounts? sooner or later, the media will tire of these stories, which means google will never notice. whether google intends it or not, real people rely on google services for income, and losing this income can cause hardship.
- dhugiaskmak 14y ago
  You're asking the wrong question here. It's not "what plans does Google have?", it's "what incentive does Google have?" and the answer is none.
TillE 14y ago
> after we saw the article on Techdirt It's unfortunate that Google is still relying on the press/blogs as a means of elevating customer support tickets. I know this stuff isn't easy, but I really hope some serious effort is going on to make Google better at customer support. It's a major blind spot. Automation is great, but it will never account for every possible scenario.
- bane 14y ago
  Actually, I'd argue it is relatively easier than Google is making it. It's a solved problem. It's called a "customer service department". They've been around for probably a century now. And yeah, Google doesn't want the overhead of such a department I get it. But there isn't even an automated solution to this. A human still has to deal with these issues, but now they have to be taken off of their normal line work to handle these cases. The "solution" to manual or automated cusomter service is not to just get rid of customer service.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I'm guessing there's some ripe patent territory hiding behind the artificial constraint of declining to offer customer service.
thenomad 14y ago
It's a pity that Google don't have a better way to handle problems with Adsense. In most cases I can see the benefits of not offering customer service, but when you're talking about losing individual customers making Google $10k+ per year, I would have thought some kind of personal contact beyond a non-specific copy-paste of adsense rules would be intelligent. (I speak from experience here. Adsense was disabled on my own site - which does about 600k page impressions a month - in late August, for some very vague reasons. I'd appeal, but I don't know what I was doing wrong, which makes fixing it rather hard. Instead, I've been working on replacing Adsense revenue with other sources - but that has its own problems.)
- AJ007 14y ago
  Google has account reps. They have "Adsense in your city." You can meet them. The problem is, when they kick you off, they don't tell you why. We had an issue with a project I was helping someone on. Google waited until the very end of the month to terminate the account, leaving that business associate out a mid five-figure amount of $$$. It was really jarring because the traffic was legitimate. I know, because I could see good conversions coming through ad campaigns I was running. We spent months trying to figure out why the hell the account was terminated. Finally we got a pretty good guess over what caused the termination -- something the Google account rep said was "ok." This was in writing. The best solution right now is to personally know people who work or worked there. That's an unrealistic "fix" for 99.9% of customers. I'm not sure if a human or a machine making the decisions is worse. What scares me most is having competitors bribe Google employees to do things that put me in an unfair position. Alternatively, Google employees who are "entrepreneurs" running stuff with inside information and power. I know from a friend that the first has happened, and we know from court cases the latter has occurred as well. Google's traffic is worth an incredible amount of money, and as long as it is this is going to be a problem.
  - ommunist 14y ago
    The only solution for 'godlike' demon is to kill it. The world will be probably better without Google.
tristanperry 14y ago
Hi Matt, Would be nice if AdSense could go back to the 'old day's - that is, we could speak to an actual Human being, instead of being ignored via canned responses :) I understand Google having actual Humans responding to their customers/publishers would be tricky due to the scale of things, but the current system seems too impersonal and I hear of these stories all the time? Not everyone has the luxury of being published in the mass media (which seems to be one of the only ways that Google will nowadays change its mind)

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...
Matt_Cutts 14y ago
I agree that more authors are giving away their books online for free (John Scalzi, for example). My point is that it's unusual for authors to do it by pointing to a torrent. Of the four examples you mentioned, the authors provided links in a wide variety of formats (ePub, HTML, TXT, Mobi), but I didn't see any torrent links. All the links I saw in a fast scan were direct download links. I think that's much more common than an author posting a link to a torrent.
- mbrubeck 14y ago
  It's less common but hardly unprecedented. 1. Charles Stross (one of the four examples above) used to point readers to BitTorrent for his free book downloads: http://web.archive.org/web/20090514034859/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/accelerando/ http://web.archive.org/web/20090514034859/http://www.antipop... (And he complains about automated scanners flagging legit files as copyright violations: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbeciles.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/imbecile... ) 2. Unni Drougge use The Pirate bay to post a torrent of an audio version of her best-selling novel: http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1029.html http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-1029.html 3. Larry Lessig releases his book "Free Culture" as a torrent: http://lessig.org/blog/2004/03/free_culture_is.html http://lessig.org/blog/2004/03/free_culture_is.html (And of course, a USC student had his network account disabled for downloading this completely legal torrent: http://boingboing.net/2006/08/25/universities-put-hol.html http://boingboing.net/2006/08/25/universities-put-hol.html ) 4. Dan Morrill posts a torrent link to his book about selling e-books: http://torrentfreak.com/my-book-please-081017/ http://torrentfreak.com/my-book-please-081017/ 5. Megan Lisa Jones self-publishes a novel through BitTorrent: http://ibla.us/2011/content/thoughts-on-the-bittorrent-promotion-and-monetizing-a-book/ http://ibla.us/2011/content/thoughts-on-the-bittorrent-promo... 6. Caris O'Malley posts a pirate torrent link of his own novel and encourages readers to download it: http://hipsterlibrarian.com/2011/08/04/illegally-download-the-egg-said-nothing-today/ http://hipsterlibrarian.com/2011/08/04/illegally-download-th... 7. Wired editor Chris Anderson links to a torrent search for his book "The Long Tail": http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/02/books_want_to_b.html http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/02/books_want_to_...
  - 14y ago

dustingetz 14y ago

what plans does google have to curb these false positives triggering actions on people's accounts? sooner or later, the media will tire of these stories, which means google will never notice. whether google intends it or not, real people rely on google services for income, and losing this income can cause hardship.

dhugiaskmak 14y ago
You're asking the wrong question here. It's not "what plans does Google have?", it's "what incentive does Google have?" and the answer is none.

TillE 14y ago

> after we saw the article on Techdirt It's unfortunate that Google is still relying on the press/blogs as a means of elevating customer support tickets. I know this stuff isn't easy, but I really hope some serious effort is going on to make Google better at customer support. It's a major blind spot. Automation is great, but it will never account for every possible scenario.

bane 14y ago
Actually, I'd argue it is relatively easier than Google is making it. It's a solved problem. It's called a "customer service department". They've been around for probably a century now. And yeah, Google doesn't want the overhead of such a department I get it. But there isn't even an automated solution to this. A human still has to deal with these issues, but now they have to be taken off of their normal line work to handle these cases. The "solution" to manual or automated cusomter service is not to just get rid of customer service.
- rhizome 14y ago
  I'm guessing there's some ripe patent territory hiding behind the artificial constraint of declining to offer customer service.

thenomad 14y ago

It's a pity that Google don't have a better way to handle problems with Adsense. In most cases I can see the benefits of not offering customer service, but when you're talking about losing individual customers making Google $10k+ per year, I would have thought some kind of personal contact beyond a non-specific copy-paste of adsense rules would be intelligent. (I speak from experience here. Adsense was disabled on my own site - which does about 600k page impressions a month - in late August, for some very vague reasons. I'd appeal, but I don't know what I was doing wrong, which makes fixing it rather hard. Instead, I've been working on replacing Adsense revenue with other sources - but that has its own problems.)

AJ007 14y ago
Google has account reps. They have "Adsense in your city." You can meet them. The problem is, when they kick you off, they don't tell you why. We had an issue with a project I was helping someone on. Google waited until the very end of the month to terminate the account, leaving that business associate out a mid five-figure amount of $$$. It was really jarring because the traffic was legitimate. I know, because I could see good conversions coming through ad campaigns I was running. We spent months trying to figure out why the hell the account was terminated. Finally we got a pretty good guess over what caused the termination -- something the Google account rep said was "ok." This was in writing. The best solution right now is to personally know people who work or worked there. That's an unrealistic "fix" for 99.9% of customers. I'm not sure if a human or a machine making the decisions is worse. What scares me most is having competitors bribe Google employees to do things that put me in an unfair position. Alternatively, Google employees who are "entrepreneurs" running stuff with inside information and power. I know from a friend that the first has happened, and we know from court cases the latter has occurred as well. Google's traffic is worth an incredible amount of money, and as long as it is this is going to be a problem.
- ommunist 14y ago
  The only solution for 'godlike' demon is to kill it. The world will be probably better without Google.

tristanperry 14y ago

Hi Matt, Would be nice if AdSense could go back to the 'old day's - that is, we could speak to an actual Human being, instead of being ignored via canned responses :) I understand Google having actual Humans responding to their customers/publishers would be tricky due to the scale of things, but the current system seems too impersonal and I hear of these stories all the time? Not everyone has the luxury of being published in the mass media (which seems to be one of the only ways that Google will nowadays change its mind)