Google and Bing, copyright infringers
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:-It isn’t about the law. It’s about words. Semantics. Sophism, if you like.
When someone hires a lawyer, and a trial and jury are involved, s/he’s looking for someone who’s good with words and theatrics; who has all the skills of a confidence huckster: someone who’s a super-performer able to tweak a jury to elicit sympathy, outrage, pity, disblief, at will.
It’s as though the law itself is incidental.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al, etc and so on, index sites of every description. They find locations and tell people specifically how to get there.
Then it’s up to the people who made the initial enquiry what to do once they arrive.
Michael Jackson is now hot because he’s not because he’s dead. But his music isn’t. Every artist of stature enjoys a sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent, upsurge in popularity when they enter the Great Beyond.
Mikey is no exception. So it’s no surprise to find people tracking downloads of his (in)famous Thriller, reputed to be the most popular music video of all time. It’s no big deal. You can use MiniNova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt or any of the smaller indexing sites to find .torrents.
Or you can use Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et al, etc and so on, to do exactly the same thing.
For example, enter michael jackson + thriller + torrent in Microsoft’s new Bing search engine and among the top five or six results you’ll find »»»
Michael Jackson – Thriller (Special Edition) (download torrent) – TPB
Artist : Michael Jackson Title : Thriller (Special Edition) Genre : Pop Source : CD Ripper : EAC 0.95b (Secure mode) Codec : MP3 Encoder : LAME 3.97 Command line : -V 0 …
* thepiratebay.org/?torrent/3716197/?Michael_?Jackson_-_?Thriller_(Special_?Edition)
* ·
Not only but also, it’ll take you to a facsimile of the actual DL page (right) – a cached copy you can use in exactly the same way as the original, which is to say if you click on ‘Download this torrent’ you get the same result as if you’d surfed over to The Pirate Bay.
So how is indexing Thriller this way any different from indexing it directly on TPB, say?
It’s all about words
Major entertainment industry movie and music elements want The Pirate Bay four hung, drawn and quartered for supposedly facilitating copyright infringement.
So why aren’t Hollywood and Big Music after Gargoyle, Yodel and Microbollocks for doing exactly the same?
Highly paid — very highly paid — smooth-talking lawyers have been hired to use every legal and quasi-legal trick in the trade to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Because when you get right down to it, it’s all about words, who’s using them, and how.
However, there’s no real difference between The Pirate Bay and Gargle, except scale.
- The former is a site run by three young guys who have little more than a determination to use the Net in the way it’s supposed to be used — as a communications tool available to everyone, not a corporate distribution vehicle for use only by a few.
- The latter is a huge online advertising agency with scary influence and unimaginable financial, legal and political connections.
But TPB has an edge Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, don’t have.
And it’s still all about words.
This time, however, there’s a difference — and a big one.
The words are ours, not the corporate medias’; not those of corporate lawyers hired to present black as white; definitely not ‘reports’ from corporate print and electronic press outlets interested in presenting only one side of the story.
We, not them, are defining the terms of reference.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
June, 2009
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June 27th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
and its called “POWER TO THE PEOPLE”
hrm whom coined that term and back then what was it about that it now applies to the internet.
June 27th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I’m both a google and tpb fan, but I don’t really understand your argument. Google indexes the web and everything on the web. If they created a Torrent search engine, the music industry would probably go after them like they did to tpb. Although torrents are sometimes used for legitimate purposes (like downloading Open Office), they are mostly used for copyright infringement. Whether this is tpb’s fault is a tough call.
The music industry realizes that without tpb, google will not be able to direct users to the tpb torrents. If they simply went after google, users would just go to tpb and nothing would change. Your argument that google should be responsible for linking to tpb results does not make sense to me. Your argument that google has a much better rep that tpb is true although. Because google is sometimes used for torrent searching, torrent searching is not google’s main purpose. Tbp is also a tracker, which helps people distribute the files.
I don’t think, however, that the tpb owners should have been arrested. I agree that the trial was completely unfair, having a biased judge. But from the music industry’s point of view, something needed to change. Though I do not know the ideal solution to this problem, it would probably end with tpb still distributing copyrighted material for free, but the music industry benefiting from it. Whether that benefiting aspect is exposure or having some perks that are impossible to pirate for users who actually bought it (like an online community), they need to compromise. Simply arresting tpb or shutting it down will not solve anything. Attacking file sharers will not solve anything either.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Goolge is not merely linking it is actually reproducing (publishing) TPB pages fromits servers. So does that not make it the same as TPB?
Jon has been sued for the content on p2pnet as the publisher and if I remember properly, so was Google in the same lawsuit.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
@Eliot:
Google doesn’t need to create a devoted “torrent search engine”.
As you just said, Google indexes EVERYTHING on the web.
That makes Google an “everything search engine”.
It is capable of returning links to ALL pages that would, supposedly, “facilitate” copyright infringement.
If anything, a search engine designed to look strictly for torrents is a SCALED DOWN version of Google.
Google, technically, SHOULD be the primary target of all these missions aiming to shut down trackers of all kinds.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
@Eliot:
(codicile to above)
If TPB and other “public” trackers were taken out, Google would still be able to locate torrents, and people would still be able to download via the ever-increasing amount of private trackers. The more public trackers you shut down, the more private trackers emerge.
___________
“…from the music industry’s point of view, something needed to change…”
Yes, that’s from the INDUSTRY’S point of view.
Millions of rationally-thinking people have a point of view as well.
We think something needs to change, all right – that being the Industry’s outdated business model built around exclusive distribution of physical media! They’re trying to control something that wasn’t designed to accomodate them and won’t – the Internet.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
@Devil’s Advocate:
Another major difference is that google listens to take-down requests, while tpb does not (see http://thepiratebay.org/legal). If the copyright industry had a problem with a link in the google search results, google would remove that link (as it has before). Google wouldn’t remove all sub-pages (most likely), but would remove the individual page that the copyright industry legitimately complained about.
The problem is that there are hundreds of thousands of torrent links that they would have to complain about, and google is not simply going to remove all tpb links because of 1 request.
Google does not “facilitate copyright infringement”. One of the requirements of copyright infringment (I think) is that the infringer must commit “willful” infringement. They must know what they are doing. Google’s bots index everything, as you said. They do not index torrent websites for the purpose of helping people share copyrighted files. They index them because they’re a website. On the other hand, tpb knows that it infringes many copyrights (as you can see in the legal section) and I would guess from experience (though I don’t have hard facts to prove this statement) that more than 90% of the material on tpb is copyrighted.
June 27th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
@Devil’s advocate:
Sorry for the double comment, because I posted the previous one before seeing your second.
I don’t think that google can index the torrents from private trackers. Hence why they’re “private”.
June 28th, 2009 at 12:35 am
@ Eliot
“On the other hand, tpb knows that it infringes many copyrights ”
Sorry, but i disagree on that point. They know they “facilitate” infringment,
but what they actually do with the site does not infringe by itself!!
byo & stw
June 28th, 2009 at 12:48 am
i use tpb to find brand new torrented movies, but you cant always be sure they are real.Thats why i then copy and paste the torrent info to google to see what it lists on that torrent and 99% of the time that tells me if its fake or not,so thanks google.without you i would download a hell of a lot more fakes than i need to to find the legit file!.lmfao at the maafia bitches!
June 28th, 2009 at 8:44 am
@ Paulus:
In case #1, was sued by a Vancouver businessman named Wayne Crookes who claimed by publishing links to things he didn’t like, I was also effectively publishing what the kinks linked to, if you see what I mean, in the process, defaming him.
BC Supreme Court judge Stephen Kelleher ruled in my favour and, “This is a very important precedent for internet law in Canada, confirming that website operators are not responsible for defamatory content on other websites to which they have merely linked,” said then Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) director Philippa Lawson. “It’s also big win for free speech and for the internet as we know it.” Predictably, the case is being appealed. http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17398
And in case #2, in May, 2006, a woman named Nikki Hemming ran, and possibly still runs, Kazaa, the Australian P2P file sharing app owned by Sharman Networks and implicated in so many of the RIAA cases. Sharman and Hemming sued me for defamation. A comment post not written by me is an essential element. Sharman later pulled out, leaving it up to Hemming. This case is due to be heard in February, 2010, meaning I’ve had it hanging over my head all this time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5230776.stm
PS: Sorry, Paulus. Almost forgot Google. http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13232
Cheers!