Google’s claim that it’s doing a great job streamlining its response to DMCA takedown notices on its Blogger-hosted websites doesn’t jibe with the truth. This year the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) has been holding a series of hearings with the goal of “improving the operation of the DMCA notice and takedown policy.”
The first public meetingwas held this past March in Alexandria, Virginia and second took place May 8th in Berkeley, California. I was able to attend the Berkeley hearing in person and heard representatives from content creation industries and service providers give their perspectives on the current state of “notice and takedown” for infringing content and what could/should be done to “fix” it.
Each speaker presented a PowerPoint, links to which can be found here and a video archive here. As with the initial hearing in March, Google was represented by its Legal Director for Copyright, Fred von Lohmann who walked the audience through Google’s “DMCA notice and takedown tools” and highlighted what he called the company’s “trusted submitter program.” In his PowerPoint, Mr. von Lohmann referenced Google blog post from 2011 “New tools for handling copyright on Blogger” that supposedly highlighted the great progress that’s been made in streamlining the process.
Listening to Mr. von Lohmann it seemed clear that his words were designed for an audience made up of government officials and industry representatives and not indie artists. He (carefully) described a two-tiered system in which “trusted” submitters have access to a wealth of takedown mechanisms to remove infringing content from Google affiliates. However, aside from YouTube, access to these “trusted” programs seems limited to the big film and music entities.
Specifically, with regard to Blogger, the criteria as to how one becomes a part of this so-called “trusted submitter” program remains murky and ill-defined. Immediately following the event I searched Google to find out more (and how to apply) I only came across a link to Mr. von Lohmann’s USPTO PowerPoint. There was nothing on any Google site to answer the question as to how indie rights holders could utilize this so-called “tool.” Since there was no more information to be found, shortly after the event I took to Twitter to ask @flohmann directly for a clarification on his presentation. The response thus far, only crickets…
In addition to this lack of clarity as to who exactly can take advantage of certain tools, Mr. von Lohmann’s careful characterization of his company efficient takedown system did not match my user experience, particularly with regard to Blogger. Over these past few years I’ve documented time and time again the many ways Blogger--and therefore Google–fails to live up to its promises to remove infringing content from its platforms.
Yet, according to Google’s self-published, self-serving report, “How Google Fights Piracy,” (that I’ve criticized in a previous post) the company continues to insist that it’s proactive fighting piracy on its Blogger web-publishing platform:
We remain vigilant against the use of the Blogger platform by pirates looking to set up a free website…we will remove infringing blog posts when properly notified by a copyright owner, and will terminate the entire blog [emphasis added] where multiple complaints establish it as a repeat infringer.
Sorry, but the facts clearly don’t match up with this corporate hyperbolic PR spin. Truth be told, Blogger’s takedown system is, in reality, a hot mess. Add Google Drive to the mix and company claims of a “streamlined” takedown process seem even more absurd.
Blogger content that is reported as infringing takes weeks, not days to remove.
Blogger hosted blogs that are in the business of promoting pirated movies remain online despite multiple, repeated DMCA notices and despite clear evidence they exist to pirate films.
The Google DMCA takedown procedure is not easy to navigate. Once users find it, they must repeatedly choose options in order to (eventually) get to the correct takedown form, even someone well versed in the procedure. Why not offer direct links to the correct forms for each platform?
Blogger’s website templates offer no direct links to Google’s (streamlined) takedown form. Why can’t Blogger hosted sites automatically provide a button/link in their menu bar or footer, designed as part of any page template to enable easy and direct access to Google’s “streamlined” takedown form?
Google Drive takedown procedures are convoluted and unclear. No easy way to determine file’s URL to report and no direct link to report.
When a file is reported on Google drive it can take weeks, not days, to remove the infringing content.
Rather than fulfill its promise to expedite takedowns for copyright infringement, it seems that the “Google Team” does everything within its power to make the process convoluted, cumbersome and difficult–particularly for individual artists who don’t have the deep pockets to hire help and/or automate the takedown workflow. Please take some time to review the graphics that I’ve created that illustrate just how badly Google is doing when it comes to Blogger (and Google Drive) takedowns.
Given the complexity (and hilarity) of attempting to remove pirated stream of our film “And Then Came Lola” (seen in the example above) hosted on Google Drive I made the following video that will walk viewers through the process. Weirdly I was able to find the URL (that was not the case with some of the other examples I’ve provided) yet that didn’t help much since pirated copy is still, as of today, June 1st, available on line–more than two weeks after I sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google.As far as I’m concerned, when Google characterizes itself as doing a good job with this process I can only shake my head. No matter how many ways Google spins it, it’s not true.
While researching the issue of sexism in advertising for a piece I posted earlier today I came across this series of ads sponsored by the United Nations and produced by Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai in which they employed a simple Google search and the subsequent “auto-complete” results to illustrate just how pervasive sexism remains in our world.
Click to enlarge
According to a post on the UN Women website, “the searches confirm the urgent need to continue making the case for women’s rights, empowerment and equality, a cause the organization is pursuing around the world.” The site provides more background on the ad series:
…uses genuine Google searches to reveal the widespread prevalence of sexism and discrimination against women. Based on searches dated 9 March, 2013 the ads expose negative sentiments ranging from stereotyping as well as outright denial of women’s rights.
“When we came across these searches, we were shocked by how negative they were and decided we had to do something with them,” says Christopher Hunt, Art Director of the creative team. The idea developed places the text of the Google searches over the mouths of women portraits, as if to silence their voices.
“The ads are shocking because they show just how far we still have to go to achieve gender equality. They are a wake up call, and we hope that the message will travel far,” adds Kareem Shuhaibar, copy writer.
Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai created a video to highlight their findings, “The Autocomplete Truth.” It’s worth watching (below):
According to Google, its auto-complete search predictions are “a reflection of the search activity of users and the content of web pages.” Since the UN campaign was created in 2013 I thought I’d check Google for a local update of such “activity.” I can’t attest to what search results might appear in Dubai, but according to Google search results I got today (from a U.S. IP), the search term “women should” ismagically transformed into “women shouldn’t” thenauto-completed with the phrases “should not vote” and “should stay at home.”
When I searched using “women are” the auto-completes transformed it into the phrases “women aren’t funny, women are shallow, and women are like bacon.” The final phrase provided would could be considered a case of reverse sexism, “women are better than men.”
Frankly,I’d much prefer seeing an auto-complete that read “women are equal to men.” 🙂 Clearly Google’s algorithms and our society still need work.
Misogyny be found everywhere, even inadvertently on the pages of Salon
In the aftermath of the terrible Santa Barbara massacre, Salon.com Assistant News Editor Prachi Gupta posted a story today in which she examined the role misogyny plays in “nerd culture.” Gupta said she wrote the piece to explore issues raised by, “Arthur Chu, a self-identified nerd who has written a gripping call-to-action in the Daily Beast.” Her piece, like several that have appeared on Salon.com this week, adds to the overdue and significant conversations being played out across social media hashtags (#YesAllWomen) and via news outlets across the country. Gupta quotes Chu:
So, a question, to my fellow male nerds:
What the fuck is wrong with us?
How much longer are we going to be in denial that there’s a thing called “rape culture” and we ought to do something about it? No, not the straw man that all men are constantly plotting rape, but that we live in an entitlement culture where guys think they need to be having sex with girls in order to be happy and fulfilled. That in a culture that constantly celebrates the narrative of guys trying hard, overcoming challenges, concocting clever ruses and automatically getting a woman thrown at them as a prize as a result, there will always be some guy who crosses the line into committing a violent crime to get what he “deserves,” or get vengeance for being denied it.
I strongly urge everyone to read both Ms. Gupta’s and Mr. Chu’s worthwhile posts, but in doing so I’d also like to point out that perhaps Salon.com’s editorial staff should examine their own pages and consider how it, inadvertent though it may be, some of their own advertisements add fuel to the notion that women should be viewed as sex objects. Take a look at the story and note the photo/headline teases “From Around the Web” window that adorns lower right sidebar in the screen capture below: Now in the scheme of things, they’re relatively minor and juvenile examples–but nonetheless, the double entendre’s are clear. Websites subscribe to these feeds to attract traffic and clicks, i.e. income and they’re ubiquitous, and I’m sure many would argue harmless. Perhaps so, but maybe the fact we have grown so accustomed to images such as these, is worth examining while we’re on the subject of the general misogyny and sexual objectification of women. Layer by layer, bit by bit, these advertising images do add up to something greater and more troubling.
Ms. Gupta notes the, “pervasive sexism” that plagues our society. With that in mind, perhaps when Chu asks, “What the fuck is wrong with us?” Salon’s editors could begin to answer that question by revisiting the sexist spam that splashed on their own pages.
Submitted by Sofia Castillo on May 12, 2014 During the SOPA debate, many opponents of the bill supported a ‘follow the money’ approach to reduce online piracy by cutting off advertising revenue from pirate sites. On May 8, Electronic Frontier Foundation…
The fledgling news site vox.com’s (no relation to this site) purported “simple” mission, according to its founder Ezra Klein, is to “explain the news,” as he noted on his Facebook page:
Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Our mission is simple: Explain the news. Politics, public policy, world affairs, pop culture, science, business, food, sports, and everything else that matters are part of our editorial ambit.
Our goal is to move people from curiosity to understanding:
Given its stated mission, one has to wonder then, if giving voice to right-wing anti-copyright talking points, under the guise of journalism, fulfills this goal?
In writing about Mr. Lee last October, I took issue with a Washington Post column that trumpeted piracydata.org’s* dubious findings that blamed distributors, not online thieves, for the growth of online piracy. I noted at the time that Mr. Lee’s piece should be taken with a huge grain of salt given his (undisclosed) ties to an anti-copyright think tank.
Too bad their original graphic (and data) contained errors–a fact belatedly pointed out by the Washington Post’s Timothy B. Lee in his story which featured the provocative headline, “Here’s why Hollywood should blame itself for its piracy problems.”Lee updated his piece (and changed his headline):
Correction: The original data supplied to us by PiracyData.org was inaccurate. It showed 1 movie available for rental and 4 available for purchase. In fact, 3 are available for rental and 6 are available for purchase. We regret the error…
At the time, I wasn’t the only one to cast doubt on Mr. Lee’s journalism. In a piece published in the Columbia Journalism Review, “A piracy defense walks the plank at the Post,” Ryan Chittum questioned Mr. Lee’s reporting:
There are many problems with Timothy B. Lee’s Washington Post blog post on Hollywood’s supposed culpability for the theft of its own movies, beginning with the morally unserious jujitsu deployed in arguing that Hollywood is culpable for the theft of its own movies. The Mercatus- and Cato-connected editor of the Washington Post tech blog that aims “to be indispensable to telecom lobbyists and IT professionals alike, while also being compelling and provocative to the average iPhone-toting commuter” also had a major correction that undermines the entire premise of the piece and reveals its one-sided reporting.
Fast forward to today’s story. Mr. Lee, now writing for Vox, has given us a piece that once again manages to deftly advance anti-copyright memes. At first blush the title is disarming in that seems to take Google to task for its growing lobbying clout, yet if one actually reads the work it’s actually a clear effort to amplify the talking points recently spouted by notorious anti-copyright shill Derek Khanna in a recent Business Insider piece, “It’s Time To Confront the Anti-Copyright Lobby.” Khanna argued that, “We know the costs of continuing extremist copyright policies completely removed from the Constitution’s original public meaning; the American people deserve better then politicians selling out to Hollywood.”
According to Mr. Lee, this right-wing “shift” against copyright “seems overdue.”
Conservatives have long loathed Hollywood for the liberal values promoted in its movies and for the tendency of Hollywood celebrities to make campaign contributions to Democrats. That might be why Republicans broke ranks more quickly than Democrats in opposing the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act in 2012.
There are also genuinely conservative arguments for reining in the excesses of the copyright system. A recurring theme in both Khanna and Bell’s writing is that today’s laws are far more generous to copyright holders than those that existed in the early years of the republic. Bell and Khanna emphasize that the Founding Fathers viewed copyright as more a government-granted monopoly than a form of property rights.
Mr. Lee is certainly free to write about the debate over copyright legislation, and he appears to have learned the lesson that it’s important to disclose his affiliations with anti-copyright organizations (or risk be outed by the CJR) as he included this caveat in paragraph 3 of his piece.
And, to be clear, I’m not an impartial observer to this debate, having written about copyright issues for both Cato and Mercatus.
However, given his close ties political interests with a stake in the very topic he examines, readers should digest his piece with the skepticism is deserves and appreciate why he insists on characterizing Hollywood’s ongoing efforts to protect its creative products as a “copyright agenda.”
Lee reveals his hand when he concludes with a summation that, while not as biting, clearly mirrors the sentiments expressed by Mr. Khanna:
And internet companies like Google will only become more important to the American economy in the coming years, so Hollywood’s copyright agenda is going to increasingly face bipartisan skepticism on Capitol Hill.
In taking a not-so-veiled swipe at movie industry concerns, Mr. Lee also conveniently fails to mention that independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors etc. share Hollywood’s “copyright agenda.” This omission reveals another reason his superficial analysis remains suspect. When he writes about copyright, whether in the Washington Post or Vox, Lee’s predictable, myopic and simplistic condemnations of big Hollywood seem knee-jerk in nature.
Why is it that when writing about copyright reform writers/bloggers like Mr. Lee never seem to acknowledge, nor explore, the fact that “big” Hollywood employs thousands of little people and what the vitality of movie manufacturing means to them? They also routinely fail to include the perspectives of a vast number of small creators in the United States whose livelihoods depend on copyright. Why not admit that there are interests besides Hollywood that have skin in the game?
Surely there is room for discussion over revisiting copyright terms, etc. but given that the mindset of insiders like Khanna and Lee–who continue to author pieces that paint discussions regarding copyright reform in broad brushstrokes of black versus white–there’s little chance of that happening. By ignoring the very existence of (most) creators who depend on copyright, such posts become nothing more than a megaphone for memes generated by the very “think” tanks under scrutiny. If Vox editors are serious about “explaining the news” why not publish a piece that covers both sides of the debate–deconstructing the shades of gray that exist–and that all too often, are forgotten in today’s so-called journalism? Help the public “understand” that copyright is a complex issue that deserves to be clarified–not clouded by oblique reportage.
*BTW, it’s interesting to note that piracydata.org’s website hasn’t been updated since late November (2103). I guess now that it’s served it’s PR purpose the site’s “dataset” has gone into hibernation.
The United States has the unfortunate distinction of being the only democratic country in the world whose artists and musicians receive no pay for the terrestrial radio airplay of their music. The short list of countries that share the United States’ position on this issue includes: Iran, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Rwanda.
We ask that Congress review radio airplay royalties and support American artists and musicians by instituting a terrestrial radio performance royalty.
As an indie film and broadcast journalism veteran, I'll share my perspectives on issues of interest to the creative community and beyond--Ellen Seidler
Google’s claim that it’s doing a great job streamlining its response to DMCA takedown notices on its Blogger-hosted websites doesn’t jibe with the truth. This year the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) has been holding a series of hearings with the goal of “improving the operation of the DMCA notice and takedown policy.”
Yet, according to Google’s self-published, self-serving report, “How Google Fights Piracy,” (that I’ve criticized in a previous post) the company continues to insist that it’s proactive fighting piracy on its Blogger web-publishing platform:
