Google vows to fight antipiracy bill even if passed

Post by mtogo » Thu, May 19, 2011, 8:56 PM UTC

powertower wrote: post #18

wccrawford wrote: post #3

"Google seems to think it's above America's laws." ... No, it seems to think that particular law is unjust, and as responsible citizens, they are duty-bound to fight it.

Things are not that clear. Do you know what the revenue sources are for a lot of the pirate movie websites? Google AdSense. And for software... From what I've seen, Google often displays crack sites on the first search page for software. 1st place result for author, 2nd,3rd,4th,5th,6th,7th result for crack sites. In my own testing, I've found that at least 30% of buyers search for crack 1st, and when they can't find…

Post by smokeyj » Thu, May 19, 2011, 9:10 PM UTC

powertower wrote: post #21

smokeyj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's revenue from pirated movies and software is virtually non-existent. Their real interest is Youtube, considering half it's content probably infringes copyright somewhere.

This is not true at all and I would love to see you back it up with a credible source. This has been covered over and over again... A significant portion of those sites would not exist without AdSense revenue to cover costs and make a profit.

Post by btilly » Thu, May 19, 2011, 9:34 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #17

kwantam wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motive for fighting it is that by crossing the line from "robotic indexer of the web" to "provider of curated search data", Google assumes substantial responsibility for the content of websites outside their control. This is a nightmarish slippery slope situation for them. In my mind, making a person who provides a hyperlink responsible for the content of that link is just insanely wrongheaded and bespeaks a deep…

"This is a nightmarish slippery slope situation for them." Stronger: This is an existential crisis for them. For as rich as they appear to be and for all the resources they seem to have, the task of curating the web is still an order of magnitude or two larger at least, and for certain strict interpretations of the law, this would simply crush them. And there is no chance that any politician will look at Google and s…

Post by jbri » Thu, May 19, 2011, 10:36 PM UTC

skymt wrote: post #15

iwwr wrote: post #12

"Copyright owners have said the legislation has a series of legal checks and balances built in and would be geared only toward pirate sites." Any information on what these 'checks and balances' would be?

You can read the full text of the bill here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/docs/Bill-PROTECT-IP-Ac... Checks and balances are in section 3 (f), which describes how to file a motion to "modify, suspend or vacate" an order if the site removes the offending content or the order turns out to be in error.

Post by btilly » Thu, May 19, 2011, 11:20 PM UTC

Maakuth wrote: post #27

btilly wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's way overstated. The "curation" that is required here is, "Here is a list of domains that appear in court orders. Don't send ads to them with adsense, don't accept ads linking to these domains, drop them from search rankings." My reading of the law as written doesn't require more drastic action, such as scrubbing out links to them from blogs. That is, it isn't Google's responsibility to figure out who is infrin…

I haven't read the bill, but does it really require court orders to be shown? For what I've gathered is typical for this kind of legislation, private companies get privileges to send some kind of takedown notices (see DMCA) to the others. If those went through courts, I wouldn't be as worried.