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Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

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Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EMCAScript has an open standard that anyone can implement.

But it shouldn't be necessary, nor is "can" any reasonable defense. The same goes for the BS about "open standard" web that is actually just Google-controlled and churning constantly to anticompetitively maintain their monopoly.

>But it shouldn't be necessary

It's up to sites if they want to require an open standard and risk losing clients that haven't implemented it yet.

>churning constantly to anticompetitively maintain their monopoly.

Google open sources the implementations of these. Competing browsers like Brave and Edge are able to integrate this open source code to support them without themselves having to deal with constantly implementing new features.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#122
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically it's only really people who heavily ad-block/privacy-protect that get these scam/malware ads. When Google has no profile on you, your view is virtually worthless, so it's only bottom feeders that bid on those views. Average users get Coke and Tide ads. Its usually the most technically adept that get the worst ads, and usually they just turn their ad block back on.

If I wasn't blocking ads this is what I would normally be seeing.

Yeah, for a few weeks for sure.

But after that you would get dialed in and stop seeing them.

Google's core mission is to figure out what you are going to buy before you buy it so they can have you click through them to make the purchase.

They generally have negative interest in serving scams/malware ads because people generally don't want to buy those things. On the same token though it's a very hard problem to 100% solve, and the people impacted are usually the lowest value users anyway.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable. I don't think a map is a good example. A picture is probably a better one. A map, by its very definition, is not a replica of any part of the original artifact. Not merely because a map is not the territory, but also because it's not even a direct, unaltered view of the thing. There is clearly some creat…

Where it gets tricky is that, at least in past US case law, 'maps are facts' and thus cannot be copyrighted as easily (this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them) [0] [0] - I believe a specific case was Nintendo vs Prima publishing, which was even involving a map of a fictitious construct.

> this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them

Yes I remember reading a few years ago about the Royal Australian Navy trying to find Sand Island which I think was some tiny island marked on maps of part of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia - what they found was open ocean 1,100m deep, and concluded it was the map-maker's "mark".

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#124

The irony is that Google's success was built on crawling and indexing the open web. I understand wanting to protect your product, but once you remove affordable APIs and then object to third parties filling that gap, you're creating demand for the very behavior you're trying to discourage

I dont get the irony.

Google respects if one doesnt want to get indexed by the crawler:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#125
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how this changes things (EU forces to share search data): https://abcnews.com/Technology/wireStory/eu-forces-google-sh...

Easy workaround for Google: charge a non token non symbolic amount for Google Search.

They would have no customers, losing them all to Bing (i.e. DuckDuckGo)

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EMCAScript has an open standard that anyone can implement.

But it shouldn't be necessary, nor is "can" any reasonable defense. The same goes for the BS about "open standard" web that is actually just Google-controlled and churning constantly to anticompetitively maintain their monopoly.

Well I don't think it should be necessary to use HTML to read your comments, but here we are.

Why don't you make a de-JSing Google proxy? Like SearX-NG?

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#127

> The whole thing was just “we don’t like that this is happening, so we’re suing.” Typical behavior from a big company with immense resources. They probably thought they would get a settlement or SerpAPI could not afford to fight. I assume they are pretty small, at least in comparison to Google (I've never heard of them). Google has so much money that even a "loser pays" requirement on litigation probably would not d…

SerpAPI is probably paid by most of the marketing industry to monitor their own position in Google results. And those guys seem to have unlimited money.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a articale I read "somewhere" that reported the Facebook makes big profit (Billions) from scams. So they have no ( or no strong motive) motive to shut such scams down An example is courtcase against Meta for using a Australians mining billionares likeness to promote a crypo investment scam. https://www.afr.com/technology/dad-it-s-a-fraud-call-that-sp...

This is why Section 230 is fundamentally wrong. Because the core concept of it assumes reasonable behavior without monetary incentives . Which is great if you're legislating someone's personal forum about their hobby. But Section 230 applied to the ad industry is incredibly, incredibly broken, because advertising companies do not have any incentive to act in good faith. As soon as a dollar of profit is involved in a…

Section 230 is fine but people keep misapplying it. It says Facebook didn't publish the ads, the ads publisher did. It doesn't say Facebook doesn't have to take them down. It doesn't say Facebook can't be ordered to reveal who the ad publisher is so they can go to jail.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#129

The irony is that Google's success was built on crawling and indexing the open web. I understand wanting to protect your product, but once you remove affordable APIs and then object to third parties filling that gap, you're creating demand for the very behavior you're trying to discourage

Pulling up the ladder behind you is a tale as old as capitalism.

Re: Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where it gets tricky is that, at least in past US case law, 'maps are facts' and thus cannot be copyrighted as easily (this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them) [0] [0] - I believe a specific case was Nintendo vs Prima publishing, which was even involving a map of a fictitious construct.

> this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them Yes I remember reading a few years ago about the Royal Australian Navy trying to find Sand Island which I think was some tiny island marked on maps of part of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia - what they found was open ocean 1,100m deep, and concluded it was the map-maker's "mark".

The consensus was that Sandy Island was not a copyright “trap.” Some of the sightings may have been floating pumice from an undersea volcano, and the “confirmations” came from a chain of errors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island,_New_Caledonia

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