by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Google, Piracy, Tech
It’s been a few months since Google announced a new initiative designed to lower search results for web-sites reported for piracy. According to Google, legitimate sites would move up and pirate sites would move down:
We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.
Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.
At the time, Google’s announcement seemed encouraging, despite their careful use of the more flexible phrase “may appear lower” as opposed to “will appear lower.” Now that some time has passed, I thought I’d do a random search to see how well Google’s new algorithm is working to thwart piracy. I decided to do a fairly generic search using the terms “watch free movies online.” I did not specify a time frame or put the search terms in quotes. This was the result.
Result for search “watch free movies online”
The first two results were “sponsored results” (shaded in pink) which direct users to legitimate sites Yideo and Netflix. However, the top two non-sponsored sites are sites offering pirate links. I clicked “LetMeWatchThis” the second non-sponsored result. That took me to this landing page which entices users with an array of movie poster thumbnails from current releases (many haven’t even been released on DVD). I chose to click on a thumbnail for film that is scheduled to be released next week on December 4th, 2012–The Odd Life of Timothy Green.
Below a short summary of the film, there’s a list of 30 links to watch/download it. I did not examine each and every link, but aside from several “sponsored” links, most point to sites known to host pirated films.
Ignoring the first one (it’s a sponsored link that leads to an illegal pay-to-watch site) I clicked on the link to “Sockshare” a popular cyber-locker site (one of many to flourish in the vacuum left by Megaupload’s shutdown). After clicking the link, and navigating past an ad (remember these pirate sites are in the business of making money off stolen content) I arrived at an embedded, full stream of the film.
Remember, according to Google’s explanation of its new policy, “we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.” With this in mind, I decided to check Google’s “transparency report” to see how often this particular domain had been reported for copyright violations. According to these results, there had been more than 10,000 requests for the URL to be removed.
I also checked the value of this website using and found this:
If these Alexa statistics are accurate, it’s safe to say that operating this particular pirate site is a lucrative endeavor indeed. It’s long been notorious for its illegal links. The fact this site comes up second in a Google search for to “watch free movies online” is certainly a factor in their robust income. Despite Google’s pledge to begin “using this (copyright infringement reporting) data as a signal” to adjust search rankings, their new algorithms don’t seem to be penalizing this site in the least. To the contrary, it seems this site is being rewarded with a plum ranking resulting in plump profits.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that, despite lip-service to the contrary, not much has changed when it comes to Google aiding and abetting websites that profit from piracy.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
A blog post by Frederic Filloux at the Guardian.uk.co laments the fact that staggered release windows force “honest viewers” into piracy, particularly when it comes to television:
As for the TV shows such as Homeland and others hits, there is not justification whatsoever to preserve this calendar archaism.They should be made universally available from the day when they are aired on TV, period. Or customers will vote with their mouse anyway and find the right file-sharing sites.
Though I think he’s absolutely correct in his analysis, I believe we are seeing an evolution as to how release dates are managed. The notion of “territories” is quickly becoming obsolete–audiences are no longer regional, but global.
Were we releasing our film today, non-theatrically, I’d push for a worldwide, immediate release, if possible. While it would make good business sense, logistically it might be more difficult in that various platforms (ie iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, etc.) often have their own timetables. Larger companies have the power to mandate release schedules, but for independent producers, it’s not so simple.
Indie filmmakers are stuck between a rock and hard place. In order reach as wide an audience as possible filmmakers are often beholden to distributors that offer ready access to popular online platforms but unfortunately, most of those same distributors only operate in limited countries/territories. Ultimately a film’s distribution patterns can resemble a patchwork quilt of availability across the globe.
I expect this to change over time. To mitigate the the impact (and attraction) of illegal downloads, content should be released globally (with subtitles in major languages) to worldwide audiences simulatenously on as many platforms as possible.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Social Media
If you’re an indie musician, filmmaker, artist etc. it’s likely that you have a Facebook Page to promote your work or business. Over time, through hard work and conscientious social media marketing, you’ve built up quite a following. When you post updates to your page you expect that fans will see them right? Well, think again. Thanks to a change in their algorithm (and need to bolster revenues) Facebook has quietly altered the way their fan pages work. If you want all your fans (not just 20%) to see a post in their news feed, you’ll have to pay the privilege. A recent story in the New York Observer explains this new reality.
It’s no conspiracy. Facebook acknowledged it as recently as last week: messages now reach, on average, just 15 percent of an account’s fans. In a wonderful coincidence,Facebook has rolled out a solution for this problem: Pay them for better access.
Usenet, a website that offers (paid) subscribers access to a variety of “news groups” has long seemed immune from DMCA takedown notices. Could that be changing?
Content creators and ISPs (internet service providers) have come to agreement on a voluntary “Copyright Alert System” to begin at month’s end.
The progressive series of alerts is designed to make consumers aware of activity that has occurred using their Internet accounts, educate them on how they can prevent such activity from happening again (for example, by securing home wireless networks or removing peer-to-peer software), and provide information about the growing number of ways to access digital content legally.
“Six Strikes” aside, the ISPs involved have made it clear that no user accounts will be terminated. Let’s hope the goal of educating the public and reducing piracy is met. More information on the new alert system can be found here.
A new kindle book by author Morris Rosenthal provides a how-to for those who find their work uploaded (illegally) online. The book “An Author’s Guide to Fighting Internet Copyright Infringements” He explains his motivation in writing the book on Amazon.com:
I’ve probably spent more time fighting copyright infringements than writing books over the last six years. In one case, I went as far as a two and a half year fight in Federal court. But the bulk of my time has been wasted sending DMCA notices to sites that take down one infringement only to put up another.
After years of frustration I had given up even trying, but when copyright infringements began appearing above my own pages in Google search following their 2011 Panda update, fighting infringements took on a new urgency.
I took a “look inside” and from what I read, it looks promising as a guide to navigating Google’s DMCA process and the web at large. You can purchase the book for a mere 99 cents on Amazon here.
Alan D. Mutter looks at the decline in newspaper ad revenues on his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur:
With the objective evidence suggesting that the newspaper business is living on borrowed time, publishers should be using their residual economic power, brand power and marketing power to develop new digital products to protect and sustain their valuable franchises. Or else.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
With the Election Over, Attention Turns Back to Congress and What Awaits Musicians
Chris Castle takes to the pages of Huffington Post to explain five reasons why musicians (and those who care about music) should not support the misleadingly titled “Internet Radio Fairness Act.” Here’s Reason #3:
3. Pandora Wants to Legislate Profits on the Backs of Artists: Now that Pandora has a $2 billion or so market cap, the simple truth is that Pandora is trying to legislate its profits on the backs of artists and so does Google and Sirius XM — a company that has $1.5 billion in cash on their balance sheet. This is just about money, it’s not about music.
But for musicians, the salary remains the same.
Read Chris Castle’s full post “The Tide has Risen-Five Reasons to Worry About the Radio Fairness Act” here and more on the growing political debate in a November 4th story from the NY Times “Fight Builds Over Online Royalties.”
China Daily Reports that Free Music Online is Coming to an End
I’ll believe that headline when I see it, but when it comes to cracking down on piracy in China I suppose any news is good news. The China Daily is reporting that online music distributors in China are in talks with Warner Music Group, Universal Music and Sony Music Entertainment to “charge” for music downloads. Not everyone is supportive, nor optimistic about the proposed effort. Read the entire story on China Daily here.
Debate Over Internet and Tech Issues Keep Low Profile During Campaign
Despite a long and cantankerous campaign, neither candidate seemed to pay much attention to issues surrounding the internet and technology. That’s bound to change once the dust settles. For a breakdown on the two campaigns and their take on technology issues, check out this report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
Looks like Google is gradually coming to terms with the reality that monetization of content theft is not a viable path forward. They’ve apparently settled a trademark dispute with Rosetta Stone.
From a press release issued today:
Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE:RST) and Google have agreed to dismiss the three-year old trademark infringement lawsuit between them and to meaningfully collaborate to combat online ads for counterfeit goods and prevent the misuse and abuse of trademarks on the Internet. The companies will also work together to help law enforcement officials around the world go after counterfeiters at the source. By working together, Google and Rosetta Stone hope to improve detection methods, and better protect from abuse brands like Rosetta Stone, advertising platforms like Google AdWords, and ultimately consumers on the Internet At the end of the day, both companies would rather cooperate than litigate, and we believe this agreement is an important step toward eliminating piracy and trademark abuse on the Internet.
Rosetta Stone had claimed that individuals searching for its products using Google’s search engine were ending up at sites that featured counterfeit or competitor’s software.
It’s not clear exactly what’s meant by “working together” but the notion that they can “cooperate rather than litigate” bodes well for those who embrace innovation and content creation.
