RIAA gives Google a pat on the back
p2pnet view Advertising | RIAA:- Google’s Big 3 must be blushing with pride.
They’ve had a qualified Attaboy Seal of Approval from the Big 4.
Well, from their American general factotum, anyway.
Google, the net’s Number One file sharing indexing site, “has now officially lined up alongside the entertainment cartels”, said p2pnet recently.
“There are more than 1 trillion unique URLs on the web and more than 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute”, we quoted Google lawyer Kent Walker as saying on the company blog, going on, but “along with this new wave of creators come some bad apples who use the Internet to infringe copyright”.
Actually, they don’t, p2pnet pointed out, going on, “They share with each other, as people have done since the beginning of time. But Hollywood and Big music have re-framed sharing as ‘copyright infringement’.
But “As the web has grown, we have seen a growing number of issues relating to infringing content”, Walker gargled on Google. The answer? Four changes, to wit >>>
- We’ll act on reliable copyright takedown requests within 24 hours. We will build tools to improve the submission process to make it easier for rightsholders to submit DMCA takedown requests for Google products (starting with Blogger and web Search). And for copyright owners who use the tools responsibly, we’ll reduce our average response time to 24 hours or less. At the same time, we’ll improve our “counter-notice” tools for those who believe their content was wrongly removed and enable public searching of takedown requests.
- We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete. While it’s hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we’ll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.
- We will improve our AdSense anti-piracy review. We have always prohibited the use of our AdSense program on web pages that provide infringing materials. Building on our existing DMCA takedown procedures, we will be working with rightsholders to identify, and, when appropriate, expel violators from the AdSense program.
- We will experiment to make authorised preview content more readily accessible in search results. Not surprisingly, we’re big fans of making authorised content more accessible on the Internet. Most users want to access legitimate content and are interested in sites that make that content available to them (even if only on a preview basis). We’ll be looking at ways to make this content easier to index and find.
“These changes build on our continuing efforts, such as Content ID, to give rightsholders choice and control over the use of their content, and we look forward to further refining and improving our processes in ways that help both rightsholders and users”, Google stated and, “No need to stay tuned”, we said.
But we were wrong.
On the heels of the announcement, “We certainly have a deep interest in these issues”, said Mitch Bainwol, spinster-in-chief for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), owned by Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by a Canadian).
He went on >>>
Our first blush take? These are encouraging and positive first steps towards a more sensible online experience for both users and the music community.
Google deserves credit for proposing a constructive set of reforms and undertaking useful steps to better protect the rights of creators and encourage legal ways to enjoy music.
While there is much more work to be done, this announcement is an important acknowledgement that everyone involved in the online ecosystem has a shared responsibility to constructively address the online piracy problem that is devastating the creative industries.
Obviously, the details of implementation will be critical, and we look forward to working with Google on all the steps necessary to effectively combat infringement.
OK. Stay tuned. 
p2pnet – Google to become Corporate Copyright censor, December 2, 2010
spinster-in-chief – Better musical Googling, December 2, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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December 10th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
The “users experience” as defined by the “corporate agenda”, that’s the way I see it.
quote from Mitch Bainwol: “the online piracy problem that is devastating the creative industries.”
Yes, indeed, it is devastating the creative industries and it’s about time, because that’s all they are, industries that have nothing to do with Arts and eveything to do with the accumulation of the capital for the benefit of the few.