Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content • Hacker News Board

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#51

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 11:36 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #4

I think this is pretty fair on Google's part. How could you possibly figure out who owned content? What if I published a book, it was copy-pasted in blogs, and then later I put it somewhere crawlable by Google? You certainly can't just say "first time we saw it, that's the proper owner". It would either require a massive amount of manual QA to get right (and even then, there are going to be interminable copyright bat…

People have been complaining about this problem for a LONG time.

Duplicate removal is essential for making a web search engine that works. For instance, together with a CS research group, I built a search engine for a major university library that had more than 80 web sites. We found huge amounts of duplicate content produced by various mechanisms (for instance, multiple people posted the same stuff to the web.) If your ranking is content-based, all of the duplicate documents are going to rank the same and form a "plug" that excludes other documents.

It has long (post 2006) been a common story that "I wrote a blog post but somebody else ranks for it." For instance, I made a blog post that got a huge amount of traffic in the day, but right now you search for it and you find a presentation from some fresher at Oracle that is based on those ideas.

There are many factors that make this hard to control and these include: (1) for one "real" origin there are probably ten or a hundred fakes, so if you are picking at random you strike out -- you have to not only outrank one fake you have to outrank all the fakes, (2) freshness... copies are fresher than the original, also they can be updated years later, (3) also the bad guys think a lot more seriously about indexation, Page Rank, and other variables they control than do most content creators.

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#52

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #4

I think this is pretty fair on Google's part. How could you possibly figure out who owned content? What if I published a book, it was copy-pasted in blogs, and then later I put it somewhere crawlable by Google? You certainly can't just say "first time we saw it, that's the proper owner". It would either require a massive amount of manual QA to get right (and even then, there are going to be interminable copyright bat…

So back when Blekko was a consumer search engine we could 100% figure out who owned content on sites we crawled often. And even when we didn't we could often guess correctly more often than not based on the domain registration dates. (not to mention registry owners). That is because few people who rip off content rip off just one web site, they will rip off dozens of web sites and they will all share the same AdSense ids and the same domain registrar. This is easy stuff to spot when you crawl the web regularly.

I suspect that Google simply doesn't care. They get Ad revenue regardless and in their laissez-faire editorial position it doesn't matter. What are you going to do, use another search engine?

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#53

Post by walshemj » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #38

The title should more accurately be Google search. Many parts of Google, for instance Youtube definitely do penalize stolen content.

I have had a site that had UGC spam promoting dodgy TV streams - get hit with a penalty.

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#54

Post by 55555 » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 11:59 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #49

55555 wrote: post #24

I was huge into SEO for a few years. I try to stay out of it now, but it's worth noting that this is almost certainly due to the current algorithm's obsession with "freshness." The weaker site is ranking higher with the stolen content because their site was updated more recently. Steal some back and I bet they swap ranks again. Also, the combination of the pagerank algorithm and normal user behavior typically helps G…

> the current algorithm's obsession with "freshness." Which is how Google makes blogspam such a good business to be in, even if your content is inferior to the post you used for "research".

Most of the spam I see in the wild these days is indeed (established) dropped domains which were picked up and then loaded with thousands of pages of "fresh" spun content, with an incestuous backlink profile if any. So indeed 'blogspam'. Everything old is new again; it feels just like twelve years ago. Soon people will be keyword stuffing in a font the same color as the background...

But Google certainly isn't intending to make blogspam a good business to be in, and I'd argue that they aren't; over the past four years Demand Media's stockprice has fallen from $400/share to $4, and the general marketplace for commoditized SEO services has shrunk by a similar degree over the same period. 19 out of every 20 SEOs who were active five years ago have thrown in the towel... just check alexa graphs for the top SEO forums.

The SERPs are clean these days. Google has done an amazing job every year for at least thirteen years now of improving them constantly. The new wave of spam is social. In practice this means Buzzfeed writers stealing user-produced content from AskReddit threads and it ending up polluting my Facebook feed to the point that I can't even find any good counterfeit Raybans.

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#55

Post by PeterisP » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 12:04 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #18

jsizz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What word would you use instead? Infringing. (duh)

I can't tell if you're joking, but "infringe" means "to violate" which implies that there is a law or agreement that's being broken. That makes it sound like you agree with the idea that this is stealing.

There are all kinds of violations that are not stealing.

If I point a gun to your face and take your money, that's a law being broken, but taking that money is not stealing, it's robbery.

If I threaten to expose some dirty secrets and demand money or things from you, that's blackmail but not stealing.

If I take your textual content and re-publish it under my own name, then that's an infringing use but again, not stealing.

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#56

Post by PhantomGremlin » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 12:38 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #12

scriptproof wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it is not the job of the street vendor to know from where come these Rolex.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but it is illegal to sell stolen or fake merchandise in the United States. Anyone selling fake Rolexes is committing a crime and could also be sued. Saying that Google is "selling" stolen content isn't that clear, though. Yes, they're selling ads on search results, but wouldn't they get the same ad revenue regardless of where those links pointed? It's easier to make the case wi…

it is illegal to sell stolen or fake merchandise in the United States. Anyone selling fake Rolexes is committing a crime and could also be sued

Huh? Now I'm worried. Are you telling me that the Rolex watch I paid $30 for, that I bought from a street vendor near Times Square, might be fake? Oh no, the horror! /sarcasm

I don't think that Rolex is too worried about this. Nobody would mistake a $30 watch for a real Rolex. And, give it credit, my fake Rolex worked for a year or so. It probably just needs a new battery.

Besides, you can't sue a street vendor. They're what's known as "judgement proof".[1]

And as to police action against them, the de Blasio administration seems to have adopted a laissez-faire attitude about all this stuff. If they're willing to allow squeegee men to operate with impunity, they certainly won't care about novelty watches being peddled.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_proof

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#57

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 2:32 AM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #32

Is this any better/worse than Facebook actively trying to profit and win over users when people or organizations copy / upload / soak up views for material they did not create and don't have the rights to use? Because that's a hot-point of discussion in some creative circles as well.

Facebook's freebooting is pretty terrible. But this can destroy entire websites. The title is misleading. Google isn't just not punishing thieves, it's heavily punishing the originals. They dropped from 20th result, to 100+, because someone stole their content.

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#58

Post by tbrownaw » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 3:31 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #23

johansch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stolen implies that the original owner no longer has access to the data due to the actions of the perpetrator.

For physical property, yes. For intellectual property, it can still be stolen even if the original owner still has a copy. e.g. The Soviet spies stole the plans for the hydrogen bomb.

No, for intellectual property the word "stolen" is not appropriate.

(Well, unless you're talking about getting the courts to tell the original owner it's yours instead. Which has been at least attempted a few times.)

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#59

Post by mc808 » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 4:00 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #34

jsizz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely do not agree with the idea that this is stealing. How can it be stealing, when the owner still has the thing that was supposedly stolen? Different circumstances, different terminology. The correct terminology (see US Title 17 or CDPA 1988) is "infringing". Anyone who insists on using the word "stolen" is signalling their ignorance of the first, most basic fact of copyright law.

In my example, the specific crime may not have been stealing, but there was revenue stolen.

So it is "stealing" to produce a superior, cheaper, but otherwise virtually identical product or service that sells better and displaces a competitor's revenue? Strange, I thought that was the whole basis of market economics.

Re: Google doesn't recognise or penalise stolen content

#60

Post by userbinator » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 4:37 AM UTC

55555 wrote: post #24

I was huge into SEO for a few years. I try to stay out of it now, but it's worth noting that this is almost certainly due to the current algorithm's obsession with "freshness." The weaker site is ranking higher with the stolen content because their site was updated more recently. Steal some back and I bet they swap ranks again. Also, the combination of the pagerank algorithm and normal user behavior typically helps G…

the current algorithm's obsession with "freshness."

That explains why I've noticed some older sites which are still around, and have plenty of detailed technical information, seem to have disappeared from the search results. Somewhat sad that the "newer is better" mentality appears to have taken over completely... if I really wanted the newest things I'd look at Google News.