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Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

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11–20 of 271 posts

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#11

I think Google is in the right here. Facts are not protected by copyright and they shouldn't be. Imagine being able to copyright the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. It would be a disaster.

Have you read the written statement? He says that it's not commodity information like the height of a building or the the current time.

Just like Forbes, they employed a team of fact-checkers to find and generate estimates. Knowing the exact net worth of a celebrity isn't just a fact that someone can determine and so for Google to steal that information, which is the result of research and scrutiny is wrong.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#12

> Are everyday consumers harmed by Google’s practices YES How are consumers harmed by Google presenting extracted data in an infobox? Isn't it more convenient?

You don't get the traffic -> you don't earn money (google does).

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#13

I think Google is in the right here. Facts are not protected by copyright and they shouldn't be. Imagine being able to copyright the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. It would be a disaster.

Some things are facts, like the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. But other things aren't facts, and where something isn't a fact but instead is implicit knowledge derived from a set of both data and assumptions (like a model or an algorithm) Google should absolutely not be taking that data and treating it as their own. Given the PDF includes this quote "I decided to build a company that attempted to make educated guesses based on the sourcing of a full-time research team." I think we can assume that the data on CelebrityNetWorth wasn't "facts".

However, even if CelebrityNetWorth's data were facts, I don't believe Google should be able allowed to replicate the work that people have put in to building a website that lists facts. Google could, and eventually probably will, replace every fact based website with a sidebar in their results page. People can't compete with that. That's using Google's (de facto) search results monopoly to stop people searching the web. That's making the web worse. That's stifling innovation. I might be able to dream up some way of using CelebrityNetWorth data to improve the world (somehow...), and Google would be stopping that.

The engineers who work at Google need to stop ruining the web by trying to turn it in to their own walled garden.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#14

I think Google is in the right here. Facts are not protected by copyright and they shouldn't be. Imagine being able to copyright the density of steel or the list of historical US presidents. It would be a disaster.

While an individual fact can't be copyrighted, a collection of them can be in certain circumstances when the compiler has put in effort to create a database of them.

https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#15

> Are everyday consumers harmed by Google’s practices YES How are consumers harmed by Google presenting extracted data in an infobox? Isn't it more convenient?

In this instance, yes, it's convenient for the user.

In the global scheme of things, it kills innovation and competition, so that hurts the end user.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#16
post #2

I read the statement and think Google used and then and abused their service, but at the same time, publishing a database of people's net worth strikes me as being pretty unethical. Would they have been able to handle a GDPR request? Why didn't they put their own and their families info up there first?

In Sweden, Finland, and Norway, everyone's income tax records are public. Is that unethical?

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#17

And yet I constantly get CAPTCHA's just from blocking tracking cookies. The biggest scraper of them all goes to incredible lengths to prevent scraping. How ironic. I hope the US govt demolishes these monopolies. It's not just in web either, the closest historical precedent I can think of is the Robber Barons of the 30's

It's them protecting their technology moat I figure, not so ironic, more of a hoarder protecting their hoard.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#18
post #16
post #2

I read the statement and think Google used and then and abused their service, but at the same time, publishing a database of people's net worth strikes me as being pretty unethical. Would they have been able to handle a GDPR request? Why didn't they put their own and their families info up there first?

In Sweden, Finland, and Norway, everyone's income tax records are public. Is that unethical?

My immediate reaction would be, "yes, it is unethical for many reasons". But again, I heard the social welfare system in these countries is best in the world. So may be I shouldn't complain.

However, if I don't want to disclose my net worth and if law is on my side in my country, then Google making my data available is definitely wrong.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#19
post #16
post #2

I read the statement and think Google used and then and abused their service, but at the same time, publishing a database of people's net worth strikes me as being pretty unethical. Would they have been able to handle a GDPR request? Why didn't they put their own and their families info up there first?

In Sweden, Finland, and Norway, everyone's income tax records are public. Is that unethical?

I would say it is clearly not unethical, but it can still be a bad decision. I would say it is a disadvantage for everyone in low or medium income regions.

Re: Statement on Google’s conduct by founder of CelebrityNetWorth.com (2019) [pdf]

#20
It looks more like an ethical argument than a legal one. I don't understand how this data would be protected under US law. Can someone explain if you think otherwise?

Is the issue that the data was scraped? Or is the issue Google appropriated the scraped data for use in their search results?

From my perspective it just looks like a bad business model: spend a lot of time and effort estimating net worth, and then publish it on the open web. Publicly available data can be freely and legally scraped (and I wouldn't want it any other way): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-l...

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