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Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

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Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#31

Post by Dylan16807 »

paganel wrote: post #28
JonnieCache wrote: post #23

I said this before last time around on this non-issue: Google are not preventing people reaching tpb results. They are declining to actively push these results unbidden upon people. The massive, fundamental difference between these two things should be obvious. Do we really think it's unreasonable for google to decline to actively point it's users towards largely illegal material which they had not explicitly request…

> They have every right to do whatever the hell they want, within law, to make their business as successful as possible. If you don't like it, go use DuckDuckGo, or start your own engine. There's a public domain page index available now, have at it. Google has built its business on other people's content, is that simple. But then it started to gradually "steal" more and more of said people work, until it became the g…

I don't know what the problem with that would be. I would love to at least try out a Watson search engine.

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#32

Post by billpatrianakos »

JonnieCache wrote: post #23

I said this before last time around on this non-issue: Google are not preventing people reaching tpb results. They are declining to actively push these results unbidden upon people. The massive, fundamental difference between these two things should be obvious. Do we really think it's unreasonable for google to decline to actively point it's users towards largely illegal material which they had not explicitly request…

I'm with Jonnie here. This whole outrage is ludicrous. This is like NAMBLA throwing a hissy fit over Google not showing suggestions for search terms like "kiddie p0rn".

Like he said, the results are still there, just not the autocomplete. And stealing content? Where? A music service isn't a radical new idea and I'm sure they could have just as easily done it whether they stole content or not.

This is a for profit company. There's money to be made and I really don't see anything unethical about their new Music service. You want to talk about stealing?! Let's talk about the sites moaning about Google not autocompleting queries that are likely looking for pirated material. Now those sites are stealing. The disgusting thing about them is that they want to hide behind "freedom" and "censorship" as a way to distract or even excuse what they do.

I'm just shocked at how many people feel theyre entitled to free music, movies, software, you name it! You're not entitled to shit. I often wonder how many of those same people are in business for themselves. I'd venture to guess not many at all.

Make no mistake here, censorship, SOPA, Protect IP are all bad things. But websites that obviously, actively, and often openly break copyright laws cannot be taken seriously when we talk about freedom and censorship. It's like the KKK hiding behind the bible to support bigotry or politicians hiding behind Patriotism to pass the Patriot Act. By using those things as shields you're essentially shitting on the very thing you say you value so much.

Copyright laws have been on the books since before the web and while there's a point to be made about some parts of those laws going too far, the simple concepts of creators being able to defend themselves against the unauthorized distribution (theft) of their creations is something we should all be able to get behind. If we can't then I had better get out of the programming business because sooner or later my own colleagues will be diving for the freedom to be able to hijack and give away what I create for any price they want without any permission from me.

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#33

Post by 1010101111001 »

paganel wrote: post #30
JonnieCache wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Places and other similar parts of google's business are highly ethically suspect, far more so than the user profiling and data retention that are more often talked about. I don't understand how it's related to this particular issue though.

> I don't understand how it's related to this particular issue though. Because when it first started I think there was a mutual, non-spoken agreement between web content-owners and Google, sort of "I give you our content for free to use it on your search engine and you bring me back visitors by trying to be impartial in your SERPs; but I don't expect you to compete against me, not now, not ever". That didn't last lon…

If you want to build a search engine, there's no need to crawl the web. Just crawl Google. That's what Microsoft did.

The inequities of crawling are in my opinion a huge issue with the web that receives relatively little discussion.

If a majority of websites were to ban Googlebot, Google would be brought to its knees. Slowly.

Their index would go stale.

I like Google. But I do think crawling, who gets to do it and who does not is an underappreciated issue. Google is very lucky.

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#34

Post by grecy »

JonnieCache wrote: post #23

I said this before last time around on this non-issue: Google are not preventing people reaching tpb results. They are declining to actively push these results unbidden upon people. The massive, fundamental difference between these two things should be obvious. Do we really think it's unreasonable for google to decline to actively point it's users towards largely illegal material which they had not explicitly request…

I agree.

To keep the discussion going, how would you feel if in the future, Google removed the "offending" sites from it's index entirely?

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#35

Post by kevingadd »

redthrowaway wrote: post #20
ricree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The search results themselves are unchanged, but the instant suggestions are. From a couple quick tests, this seems to be the case for me as well, though it would be easier to be sure if I had results from a year or so ago to compare against. For example, "the pirate ba" returns "the pirate balthasar", "the pirate bar", and "the pirate bar" in several different cities. Amusingly, "bittor" doesn't complete to bittorre…

Well I don't see what the issue is, then. They do the same thing for porn or anything else that could be remotely offensive. I don't have a problem with that. They aren't blacklisting torrent sites; they're just not suggesting them.

BitTorrent is a trademark of a legal company that's trying to make money to pay employees. Google is censoring their name because they've decided they're involved in illegal activity, not because they actually are.

If Google decided to censor your business would you be happy about it?

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#36

Post by billpatrianakos »

ernesto99 wrote: post #10
wmf wrote: post #6

This doesn't really explain the back story. Google's autocomplete used to suggest searching for torrents (e.g. type "the dark knight" and it would autocomplete to "the dark knight torrent" because so many people have searched for that). While this was certainly a boon to certain sites, Google has no obligation to provide it (considering that autocomplete didn't even exist for many years). Google's new policy for pira…

This is true, but by Google's filter is not as smart as you would expect and the filter is too broad. Why include the word "BitTorrent" as it's the trademark of a fine US tech company? Why include ALL variations of searches with the dictionary word "torrent"? These decisions appear to be quite arbitrary, which is dangerous when we're talking about censorship.

I'm sure the "bit" in "BitTorrwnt" is used because people don't know the difference as use the brand name as if it were the same as the technology. Do like Rollerblades? I much prefer inline skates. See what I'm saying?

The real solution would be to solve the piracy problem and have the BitTorrent protocol go back to being widely used for its intended purpose. It wasnr intended as a piracy tool, it was intended to be an efficient, decentralized file sharing tool like p2p networks. If those protocols were being used to share the newest office memo in the company network or just non piracy related files in general then there'd be no need to the restriction and it's unintended consequences and we could revert the autocomplete policy.

It's the rule breakers that made it this way and that's where your frustration should be directed. But I'll admit that's pretty hard these days. I'm only 25 and I'm the exception but the rest of my generation and younger seem to think piracy is fine and have this sense of entitlement about it. That needs to stop.

It's pretty clear this isn't arbitrary just like the Rollerblade example I gave before. Typical users often think you have to type in a URL into the search engine. They never use the address bar! They get from site to site using a 3 step process. 1) Go to search engine of choice. 2 Type in desired URL 3) Click the first result. Those people are the reason the filter is so broad, but in the end it's the pirates who created the need for a filter to begin with.

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#37

Post by billpatrianakos »

redthrowaway wrote: post #20
ricree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The search results themselves are unchanged, but the instant suggestions are. From a couple quick tests, this seems to be the case for me as well, though it would be easier to be sure if I had results from a year or so ago to compare against. For example, "the pirate ba" returns "the pirate balthasar", "the pirate bar", and "the pirate bar" in several different cities. Amusingly, "bittor" doesn't complete to bittorre…

Well I don't see what the issue is, then. They do the same thing for porn or anything else that could be remotely offensive. I don't have a problem with that. They aren't blacklisting torrent sites; they're just not suggesting them.

There is no problem. Some websites are just hiding behind "censorship" so they can look like victims when they're actually acting illegally. Now I seriously doubt that Google will begin to blacklist these sites. That would be a step just a bit far. That is true censorship.

For now they'll let you find whatever you want, legal or not. They just won't give you any extra help along the way. I mean, even without the bells and whistles like autocomplete, spelling corrections, +1 suggestions, etc. you can still very easily find anything on Google without much effort.

It isn't Google's job to punish illegal activity but they have every right to take away the extra helpful tools that basically shove it in your face. In fact, why would Google even want to censor sites that contain illegal material? Forget the outrage about censorship for a moment. I think law enforcement would want "bad apple" sites in Googles index so they can be easily found and their owners prosecuted.

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#38

Post by kgen »

paganel wrote: post #28
JonnieCache wrote: post #23

I said this before last time around on this non-issue: Google are not preventing people reaching tpb results. They are declining to actively push these results unbidden upon people. The massive, fundamental difference between these two things should be obvious. Do we really think it's unreasonable for google to decline to actively point it's users towards largely illegal material which they had not explicitly request…

> They have every right to do whatever the hell they want, within law, to make their business as successful as possible. If you don't like it, go use DuckDuckGo, or start your own engine. There's a public domain page index available now, have at it. Google has built its business on other people's content, is that simple. But then it started to gradually "steal" more and more of said people work, until it became the g…

Hmm, how is this any worse than reddit or stumbleupon or delicious "profiting" from sharing everyone else's content? It's just reorganizing the information that is already available?

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#39

Post by billpatrianakos »

grecy wrote: post #34
JonnieCache wrote: post #23

I said this before last time around on this non-issue: Google are not preventing people reaching tpb results. They are declining to actively push these results unbidden upon people. The massive, fundamental difference between these two things should be obvious. Do we really think it's unreasonable for google to decline to actively point it's users towards largely illegal material which they had not explicitly request…

I agree. To keep the discussion going, how would you feel if in the future, Google removed the "offending" sites from it's index entirely?

Do you mean offensive sites in general or just these file sharing sites?

For torrent sites I think I'd be pissed. I'm no fan of piracy and I'm not an apologist for those sites at all but I don't think it's Google's place to do that. Google's mission is to index and organize the world's information and blacklisting websites like that would be hypocrisy. Even if we all agreed it was okay for one site it becomes a slippery slope where Google can use that for their own or their partners' benefit. There'd be an exodus and Google would slowly lose market share from that point on.

It's one thing to stop making it so easy to find a site that you barely have to type 2 letters before you get what you want. Its an entirely different thing to limit access to certain sites. If its not on Google then it doesn't exist on the Internet for all intents and purposes. We're back to emailing each other links in that case.

This should be as far as Google reaches on this short of banning these sites. From there it's the job of users to stop supporting piracy and law enforcement to shut down illegal sites in their own jurisdictions using the current laws and without creating new laws to prosecute people unless it's absolutely positively necessary.

Re: Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More

#40

Post by billpatrianakos »

1010101111001 wrote: post #33
paganel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how it's related to this particular issue though. Because when it first started I think there was a mutual, non-spoken agreement between web content-owners and Google, sort of "I give you our content for free to use it on your search engine and you bring me back visitors by trying to be impartial in your SERPs; but I don't expect you to compete against me, not now, not ever". That didn't last lon…

If you want to build a search engine, there's no need to crawl the web. Just crawl Google. That's what Microsoft did. The inequities of crawling are in my opinion a huge issue with the web that receives relatively little discussion. If a majority of websites were to ban Googlebot, Google would be brought to its knees. Slowly. Their index would go stale. I like Google. But I do think crawling, who gets to do it and wh…

How are we blocking Googlebot? If we're using robots.txt then they can simply ignore it. Googlebot can begin to identify itself differently. There are a million ways to get around a Googlebot ban and I wouldn't be the guy who thinks he's smarter than Google. You'll lose that one. They'll find a way.

But anyway, this isnt really relevant. Can you tie it in for us?

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