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Print 23 comment(s) - last by monkeyman1140.. on Jun 29 at 2:20 PM

  (Source: audiosuite.com)
British music companies aim to eliminate BitTorrent results in Google search

As U.S. officials announce a massive piracy crackdown initiative in the states, music industry leaders in the UK appear to be coming after Google. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a trade organization that represents music companies like EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner in the UK, sent the internet giant a cease and desist order.

The order demanded that Google take down not only direct links to nine BitTorrent sites, but any reference to them as well.   The organization did not pinpoint specific URLs where pirated material could be found, as is usually the case, but instead provided whole site URLs. 

Now the groups parent company, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), is getting in on the fight.  IFPI is specifically going after The Pirate Bay and is demanding that Google take down all references to the filesharing website. 

Citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Google's Report Copyright Infringement support page, the company ordered Google to remove The Pirate Bay from its index and to disable any access linking or referencing the search engine to The Pirate Bay website.  

The company's methods have some news watchers wondering whether IFPI is positioning itself to go after Google with a copyright infringement lawsuit.  Search engines are not currently held liable for data that they enable access to.

So far, Google has not responded directly to BPI or IFPI, but complaints that the company receives can be found on chillingeffects.org.

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Censorship coming of age to the west.
By Uncle on 6/24/2010 12:21:12 PM , Rating: 4
Whats next, no indexing of anything that shows the President in a negative way and any other politician. Lets make sure only favorable comments about corporations are all put at the beginning of your search requests. When you search for BP, the oil spill won't be brought up untill page 9,764. See where all this can go.




RE: Censorship coming of age to the west.
By reader1 on 6/24/10, Rating: -1
By nafhan on 6/24/2010 1:02:27 PM , Rating: 3
A more succinct (and, I believe, correct) way to say this would be:
The aims of the big content owners are diametrically opposed to the aims of search providers. Big content would like to restrict availability of certain information while search engines strive to make as much information as possible freely accessible and easy to find. This opposition may make it difficult for them to work together without one or the other curtailing their goals in regards to information availability.
That said, alleging the big search providers support piracy is silly. Unless they start doing something along the lines of skewing search results by artificially giving better search rankings to piracy websites, they are just doing what they do best: making relevant, existing information easier to find.


By Darkefire on 6/24/2010 4:20:32 PM , Rating: 1
Except search engines aren't really in the business of making anything, Google's money comes primarily from ad revenue. About the only thing content providers could threaten is to stop using Google for advertising, which would either hurt more than it would help or wouldn't have any effect at all since they have enough money to advertise in traditional media (TV, radio, etc.). Your example of developers threatening to stop making Xbox 360 games if Bing continues to link to filesharing results is skewed as well, they'd be essentially shooting themselves in the foot by taking away a very large section of their market.

For the most part it's all about the hardware and delivery methods, very few content providers are large enough to influence distribution methods without losing a large portion of their customer base. The HD format wars were largely won this way, true, but that's more because HD movie players didn't have much penetration at the time; only Sony is crazy enough to keep attacking established and ingrained formats with their own proprietary nonsense, and the only reason they haven't gone under is because they have the cash flow to survive the low tides. The Internet has become the universal standard for content delivery and casual piracy is such an integral part of modern life that it's going to take something pretty substantial to dislodge it, otherwise people will simply move onto the next option when one is removed.


By afkrotch on 6/24/2010 10:02:07 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Xbox 360 developers could easily force Microsoft to remove links to illegal game downloads from Bing search results by threatening not to make games for the Xbox 360.


Then MS says, suck mine, I won't do it. Then the developers stop making 360 games and lose even more revenue than what piracy takes away.

I'd rather make $100 million dollars for a AAA game, while losing $20 million due to piracy. Better than making $0.


RE: Censorship coming of age to the west.
By chmilz on 6/24/2010 1:16:36 PM , Rating: 3
This stuff is such horsesh!t. What about all the legal stuff on Torrent sites? I understand it's in the minority, but Torrent is also used legally.

Ie: Indie band wants to distribute music for free, doesn't have money to cover website traffic, uploads to torrent. This actually happens, and in the effort to "save" us all from ourselves, we'll also censor anyone that doesn't use the lobbyist channels.


By fcx56 on 6/24/2010 5:59:48 PM , Rating: 3
The labels could see this as convienent collateral damage, less good music that isn't putting money in their pockets to distract from what they continue to push year after year


By xsilver on 6/24/2010 11:44:59 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Whats next, no indexing of anything that shows the President in a negative way and any other politician. When you search for BP, the oil spill won't be brought up untill page 9,764.


I thought this kind of thing already happened. Obama/bp whoever buys advertising space on google, to get the first couple of results on certain keyword searches to skew ("educate") the masses. I dont think there is anything wrong with that even though it may not be 100% ethical - Blocking searches however is a different story.


this will be in the news & then go away
By rocky12345 on 6/24/2010 2:26:07 PM , Rating: 2
This will be in the news & a hot topic for a while then it will just go away. It is not like google is actually providing the downloads themselves or running the sites that are in question. all they are doing is showing the links there is nothing illegal about that in any way shape or form.

Any judge will look at this & throw it out of court. Google has high paid lawyers for a reason to weed out crap like this.

This is just the hot topic this week. If Google was to cave to this they would lose so much face in the public eye as people would not trust them to give proper search results any longer. Google would be shooting itself in the foot if they gave in to this type of bullying tactic.

Know do not condone pirated software or music but i do like to know when I do a search the results will be somewhat realistic to what I searched for. If Google gives in to this then this is just the beginning of what could be blocked or banned from searches. Also as another posted there are legal ways a torrent can also be used.




By xmichaelx on 6/24/2010 3:54:04 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
It is not like google is actually providing the downloads themselves

For the record, neither is Pirate Bay.


By gorehound on 6/24/2010 5:59:41 PM , Rating: 2
i am sick of the complaints of big RIAA IFPI BPI whatever !!!
The large corps have ripped us off for years and did we see anything from that ?
they pirate their own artists by putting them on comps and then not paying them the money they deserve.
the big corps even go so far as to make you look a certain way to sell more records.

support all the little guys and big finger in the air to the big labels who have nothing to offer but canned poptarts and canned pop music.
whatever artists are out there i am one too and i know i never dreamed of a big label contract.i have been involved in punk rock since 1976 and still play punk music.and us punks hate the big label junk.


The new China
By Tyhr on 6/24/2010 2:22:56 PM , Rating: 2
Censoring the internet "in the best interest of the people" is a good thing, isn't it? I mean, it works for China right?

Oboma has a way of making everything look better...heck, Bush doesn't look nearly as bad now as he used to.




RE: The new China
By wiz220 on 6/24/2010 6:46:31 PM , Rating: 3
Blah, neither political party is immune to this. They both take money from these extortionists, this crap was coming one way or another. The difference in China is that it's not a corporation driving the government to do something (fascism), it's just the government protecting itself and an ideology (totalitarian communism).


Peoples Republic Of Europe
By mrteddyears on 6/24/2010 1:41:16 PM , Rating: 2
What a buch of slimy scumbags we have running this bankrupt union of criminals




Which is it?
By masamasa on 6/24/2010 2:25:57 PM , Rating: 2
There's accountability and then there's stupidity, of which the latter is becoming all too frequent in the news as of late. Google should be accountable and liable financially for all content indexed by its search engine? Are you kidding. Here comes another Viacom/Youtube farce. Next thing we know IFPI will discover it's management was uploading and downloading torrents from Pirate Bay.

"The company's methods have some news watchers wondering whether IFPI is positioning itself to go after Google with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Search engines are not currently held liable for data that they enable access to."




I have a simple solution
By wills916 on 6/24/2010 7:39:22 PM , Rating: 2
Just dont buy ANY movies, DVDs/Blu Rays, Music, movie tickets, NOTHING. Dont give them a CENT, until they quit this bullsh!t. Thats what I've done for years because of their greed, and I dont even miss it. Screw all of those ancient companies and ancient business models.




By integr8d on 6/25/2010 3:22:38 AM , Rating: 2
Read up, kiddies. The government wants to know if you donate to any group that speaks bad about the establishment.




nice post
By abikndrik on 6/25/2010 7:16:01 AM , Rating: 2
Well, first of all, Godaddy has the crappiest user interface of all domain registrars and has the worst customer service of them all. So I use Namecheap, problem solved.

About Google, well, I am pretty sure that the Chinese government won't be the type of government that Google would praise in the next 10-15 years but I am pretty sure Google will go back to China within 5 years and lick up its own spit. Google is just too upset that it doesn't get the same pampering in China as it would in the US or elsewhere. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/automated-forex-tra...




LET GOOGLE DO IT
By monkeyman1140 on 6/29/2010 2:20:15 PM , Rating: 2
The free market will determine who users pick as a search engine. If Google wants to become just another unknown search engine because they're censoring for the chinese, the scientologists, the arabs, corporations, big media, big music and movies, and homeland security, well so be it.




Google will be forced to comply.
By reader1 on 6/24/10, Rating: -1
RE: Google will be forced to comply.
By frobizzle on 6/24/2010 1:47:13 PM , Rating: 5
Do you aspire to some day advance yourself to the level of totally retarded? Your lips are moving but NOTHING intelligent is coming out!


By mcnabney on 6/24/2010 3:39:41 PM , Rating: 2
Reader1 just does what the voices in his head tell him to do.


By mcnabney on 6/24/2010 3:42:58 PM , Rating: 2
And he lies.

Just went into the Marketplace on my Droid and searched for 'tetris'.

The EA Mobile version is the first item and is available for $1.99.

And two dozen knock-offs ranging from $2.95 to free are also available.


"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else." -- Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes











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