Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 261 posts

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#111

Post by ivanche »

laken wrote: post #43
ivanche wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might try StartPage ( https://www.startpage.com/ ). I use them happily for about a year now. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with StartPage in any way.

IIRC StartPage has the same results as Google, but just proxies, right? Don’t see how it would help the parent commenter. It’s good in combination with DuckDuckGo though, instead of the `!g` bang, you can do `!sp`

I just checked and you're 100% right! They're totally same. I wasn't aware of this until a minute ago. I'm sorry for the confusion I caused by the original comment. The advice about combination of DDG and SP is quite sound, thank you for that.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#112

Post by nashashmi »

codedokode wrote: post #107

I would prefer that Google would add labels like "pirate site" or "legitimate copy". How can a normal user understand what kind of site they are visiting and whether the site has a legal copy of a movie? The copyright agreements are not public. For example, there is a website that allows to watch Japanese TV from abroad (quite expensive by the way). How one can be sure that they are not paying to scammers?

If they labeled them then they would also ha e an obligation to remove them.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#113

Post by nashashmi »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #104
abhiminator wrote: post #4

As much as I despise multi-billion dollar 'copyright holding' corporations, I feel this is a strategic move by Google to thrust more legitimate channels of media consumption (Netflix, Prime Video, Et al) to the top of the search results page. Having said that, people who actually use torrents regularly know their way around Google and other web-based search engines, and this move, therefore, should have little or no…

I find myself using Bing all the time precisely for this reason. I would love to subscribe to netflix, hulu, hbo, etc but all my favorite TV shows are always on different networks. I wouldn't mind paying for the service (but not for 3 of them), but the online streaming mirrors are really good at what they do. Bing just works. Its has significantly less bias than google which is why I always use 2 search engines.

I like bing because as a customer to many of the services I can find out who holds my show. And if I have to buy, who do I buy it from.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#114

Post by poe876 »

ddtaylor wrote: post #108
swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself using Bing all the time precisely for this reason. I would love to subscribe to netflix, hulu, hbo, etc but all my favorite TV shows are always on different networks. I wouldn't mind paying for the service (but not for 3 of them), but the online streaming mirrors are really good at what they do. Bing just works. Its has significantly less bias than google which is why I always use 2 search engines.

As a subscriber of Netflix it's trash for my tastes now. Many of the shows I did enjoy are no longer on the service and once my subscription runs out I won't be renewing it.

I agree. Shows have become more political and less entertaining. And it's only getting worse.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#115

Post by otalp »

codedokode wrote: post #107

I would prefer that Google would add labels like "pirate site" or "legitimate copy". How can a normal user understand what kind of site they are visiting and whether the site has a legal copy of a movie? The copyright agreements are not public. For example, there is a website that allows to watch Japanese TV from abroad (quite expensive by the way). How one can be sure that they are not paying to scammers?

How can Google be sure? They can't, so they can't do it

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#116

Post by codedokode »

otalp wrote: post #115
codedokode wrote: post #107

I would prefer that Google would add labels like "pirate site" or "legitimate copy". How can a normal user understand what kind of site they are visiting and whether the site has a legal copy of a movie? The copyright agreements are not public. For example, there is a website that allows to watch Japanese TV from abroad (quite expensive by the way). How one can be sure that they are not paying to scammers?

How can Google be sure? They can't, so they can't do it

If they cannot determine which site is legal then they should not be playing with sites' ranks.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#117

Post by ascar »

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #103
nolemurs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope my feeling of relative safety is justified, but I'm not a security expert(?). If you want to be properly paranoid, you should consider getting a VPN. If you're not hiding your IP address, hiding all the rest is of limited utility. A VM doesn't really provide much meaningful anonymity - if someone wants to prosecute you for piracy they'll start by finding the IP address that was downloading/sharing the stuff…

I don't want to hide my IP address. I'm not paranoid about being found - nothing I do is illegal (I don't download, I watch streams, and that isn't illegal here, only if I downloaded the videos). For me it's only about system security, not legality. The latter would not be helped at all by using a VM.

As you said in another comment you are German and this is a very common false myth in Germany:

Streaming pirated content is exactly as illegal as downloading in Germany and also the whole EU.

Here is a source: https://www.focus.de/digital/praxistipps/anwalt-zu-eugh-urte...

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#118

Post by bproven »

kokx wrote: post #102
novaRom wrote: post #60

On any new device I normally do the same thing each time: 1) Install Firefox Nightly 2) Install uBlock Origin add-on 3) Enable Duck Duck Go as default search engine 4) Enjoy I am still looking for a good replacement for Gmail.

So far, I really like ProtonMail as a gmail replacement. Their web interface is great. It costs quite a bit more money though (compared to free gmail). I've been using it for half a year now, and the only gmail features I miss (their spam filtering and automatically prioritizing mails) are those that require them to read your mail. Which I like that they cannot.

How do you get around not being able to search email in protonmail? At least in the web client which is all I use in gmail.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#119

Post by copyrighteous »

otalp wrote: post #115
codedokode wrote: post #107

I would prefer that Google would add labels like "pirate site" or "legitimate copy". How can a normal user understand what kind of site they are visiting and whether the site has a legal copy of a movie? The copyright agreements are not public. For example, there is a website that allows to watch Japanese TV from abroad (quite expensive by the way). How one can be sure that they are not paying to scammers?

How can Google be sure? They can't, so they can't do it

Sure they could. Copyright owners could list the content they own in some centralized system, and provide canonical URLs or domains for accessing that content. Google could then show that a particular search result is the canonical page for a given movie, without having to try to guess whether some other page has an illegal copy.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#120

Post by ItsMe000001 »

ascar wrote: post #117
ItsMe000001 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to hide my IP address. I'm not paranoid about being found - nothing I do is illegal (I don't download, I watch streams, and that isn't illegal here, only if I downloaded the videos). For me it's only about system security, not legality. The latter would not be helped at all by using a VM.

As you said in another comment you are German and this is a very common false myth in Germany: Streaming pirated content is exactly as illegal as downloading in Germany and also the whole EU. Here is a source: https://www.focus.de/digital/praxistipps/anwalt-zu-eugh-urte...

As I said, I don't care about the legal question and my post was about system security only. Otherwise it would have been completely futile to mention the VM since that does nothing at all for the legal issues.

The illegality-of-streams question is not really relevant unless you are a premium account customer of a portal the authorities might get access to, or any streaming website they might get access to. They have no (legal) way to find streamers if they have no access to the server and/or whoever is hosting it or owns it. They get (non-VPNed) torrent downloaders because it's legally possible to find out which IP addresses download and/or offer a given file.

https://www.chip.de/news/Illegales-Streaming-auf-kinox-to-so...

In the past I did download torrent file videos - only to watch them exactly once or never. I got caught and paid the "Abmahnung" - so what. I stopped because I don't really need it. My need for such video content is very low. Usually I watch 10-30 minutes of movies, even "block busters", and then I'm too bored to ever watch the rest. For example, I still did not watch Game of Thrones past the end of the very first season.

Post reply on HN