by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Politics, Tech
It’s no coincidence that Google’s attempting to grab the tech news headlines with blog posts this week trumpeting the company’s ongoing efforts to fight the scourge of online child porn and illegal pharmacies. Google’s links to illegal and unsavory activities is long established, but with increased public scrutiny thanks to the NSA snooping stories and declarations like that of Mississippi Attorney General Tom Hood asserting Google’s search aids online criminals, it seems that Googleiath’s powers that be felt the time had come for some much-needed reputation burnishing.
And so, this week we have not one, but two new Google blog posts that are designed to grab the news cycle and put the Silicon Valley giant in a more favorable light. Never mind that most of it’s really just old news repackaged to fit their latest PR campaign. The first PR blast came Saturday via this post, trumpeting Google’s role in the battle against child pornography online.
Google has been working on fighting child exploitation since as early as 2006 when we joined the Technology Coalition, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop technical solutions. Since then, we’ve been providing software and hardware to helping organizations all around the world to fight child abuse images on the web and help locate missing children.
There is much more that can be done, and Google is taking our commitment another step further through a $5 million effort to eradicate child abuse imagery online. Part of this commitment will go to global child protection partners like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation. We’re providing additional support to similar heroic organizations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America.
Since 2008, we’ve used “hashing” technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. Each offending image in effect gets a unique ID that our computers can recognize without humans having to view them again. Recently, we’ve started working to incorporate encrypted “fingerprints” of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database. This will enable companies, law enforcement and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals. Today we’ve also announced a $2 million Child Protection Technology Fund to encourage the development of ever more effective tools.
While it goes without saying that any effort to battle child pornography is laudable, and it’s great that the company is “making news” by donating 2 million more to the cause, but in my (cynical) view this donation appears to not to be driven by altruism, but is more likely born from a not-so-subtle desire to rub elbows with “heroic” organizations and in order to generate positive media buzz for a company facing increasing criticism over its handling of privacy and piracy/counterfeiting issues. Google’s assertion that it employs “hashtag” technology to identify and block offending imagery also raises the question as to why they can’t do more to prevent pirated content from appearing in their search results? Oh, but I digress….
Then today, the Google PR machine was back in action with this post outlining supposedly ongoing efforts to battle illegal (rogue) online pharmacies also appears to be part of their efforts to burnish their increasingly tattered reputation:
For the last several years, Google has worked closely with a number of organizations, government agencies, and businesses to combat rogue online pharmacies from all angles.
Collectively, we are making it increasingly difficult for these operators to effectively promote their rogue pharmacies online. A variety of websites and web services are refusing ads from suspected rogue pharmacies. Domain name registrars are removing suspect rogue pharmacies from their networks. Payment processors are blocking payments to these operators, and social networking sites are removing them from their systems too.
Again, there’s nothing “new” here, really just the same old, same old. It’s also particularly ironic to see Google patting itself on the back for behavior that has not been voluntary. Wasn’t Google the company that in 2011 paid the feds a
half a billion dollar settlement to close a Justice Department investigation into its role in serving and profiting from illegal pharmacy ads. How does that jibe with them combatting
“rogue online pharmacies” for the
“past several years?”Oh, and just a week ago the company was
called out by Mississippi’s attorney general Jim Hood who asserted:
Google’s search engine gave us easy access to illegal goods including websites which offer dangerous drugs without a prescription, counterfeit goods of every description, and infringing copies of movies, music, software and games.
If Google is doing such a great job, why hasn’t anything really changed? When will enough be enough? How long can the company keep tap dancing around land mines before it’s forced to reckon with the fact it enables and profits from a plethora of illegal, online enterprises? If technology can be used to battle child pornography, why not employ it to battle other illegal online activities?
There are plenty of examples of Google enabling and profiting from online crime. I outlined some in a blog post earlier this year, “Chronic, Ill-Gotten Gains–Google’s Web of Piracy Profit” and have also written others:
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Tech
Websites that offer pirated movies and music are taking it on the chin as of late. First movie2k.to disappeared (only to be reborn as a dubious duplicate) and now Kickass Torrents, one of the most popular torrent sites on the web, has had its domain name (kat.ph) seized by Philippine officials. According to Torrent Freak:
The action was taken following a complaint from local record labels who argued that the second largest torrent site on the Internet was causing “irreparable damages” to the music industry.
The domain seizure didn’t stop the site of course, it merely moved to a new domain name. A message posted at the new domain explained,
We had to drop Kat.ph as a part of our global maintenance….This was a hard decision, but it was necessary for the further development of KickassTorrents. Stay tuned for more news.
“Global maintenance” seems to be their euphemism for staying one step ahead of the law. At any rate, despite the fact the site has moved to a new domain, the good news in all this is that there seems to be increasing momentum to shutdown, or at least disrupt, websites that facilitate illegal content theft. Of course, if you want to find a site to watch or download movies and support the filmmakers who make them you could go here instead.
Update: Torrent Freak has updated this story and adds the MPAA is targeting the new domain for Kickass Torrents in order to get the site’s homepage links delisted by Google.
… the MPAA appears to be hand-picking torrent sites and streaming portals in an effort to have their homepages de-listed from Google. The new KickassTorrents domain Kickass.to is one of the first casualties of this strategy.
This is good news for all the musicians, filmmakers and authors whose work is routinely ripped off via this site.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Politics, TV
Some good news from my neck of the woods as California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced that her office had filed charges against 3 brothers who operated pirate websites featuring stolen movies and TV shows. According to a press release issued today, the 3 Bay Area men, Hop Hoang, 26, Tony Hoang, 23, and Huynh Hoang, 20, could face up to five years in prison if convicted. The brothers were arraigned in Alameda County Superior Court yesterday on charges that they operated a website (mediamp4.com) that allowed users access to illegal streams of more than 1,000 copyrighted TV shows and movies. More from the press release:
The three have each been charged with one count of conspiracy, four counts of receiving stolen property and one count of grand theft.
“Digital piracy is theft. It is a serious crime that harms one of California’s most important economic engines – our entertainment industry,” said Attorney General Harris. “This case sends a clear message that the California Department of Justice will investigate digital piracy and prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law.”
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) initially began an investigation into iphonetvshows.net and movieiphone.net and sent a cease and desist letter to Tony Hoang. Thereafter, Tony Hoang and his co-defendant brothers allegedly resumed the illegal operation under a new domain name, mediamp4.com. The Attorney General’s office then initiated an investigation into mediamp4.com, executed a search warrant, seized property used in connection with the illegal operation and filed charges against the Hoang brothers.
Is this the beginning of a positive trend in the battle against online piracy? Last week we saw Mississippi’s AG Jim Hood raise concerns over Google’s links to illegal online activity and now California’s AG Kamala D. Harris steps into the fray. The California investigation was directed by the eCrime Unit of the California Attorney General’s Office, California Highway Patrol, and REACT (Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team) a law enforcement task force located in Silicon Valley specializing in investigating technology crimes and identity theft.
It’s alleged that the brothers earned approximately $150,000 over the past 18 months through advertising and that they drove traffic to the site via Google search ads. Once again this illustrates the ongoing link between the lure of piracy profits via online advertising and these illegal websites. The pirates are not in business for altruistic reasons; they were pirating content because it pays.
Kudos too, to the MPAA that initiated the initial investigation. Let’s not forget that taking down illegal online piracy sites not only benefits Hollywood movie-makers, but also helps independent filmmakers around the globe in the ongoing battle to protect their films from being stolen and monetized by thieves. As MPPA CEO and former Senator Chris Dodd explained,
There are now nearly 80 legal online services in the United States dedicated to providing movies and television shows to viewers. But to realize the enormous potential of these businesses and ensure an Internet that works for everyone, it is critical that government, content creators, the tech community and others work together to stop illegal rogue sites.
I tried to visit the website in question but it’s apparently already been taken offline and the domain parked, but I did find this YouTube “review” for the site which pretty much covers its (former) operations. Watching this review it seems evident that the site was designed to allow users to easily stream or watch pirated content on iPhones, iPads or computers.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPeEjRJ_tiQ&w=560&h=315]
I must say, it was heartening to hear the reviewer note that it is “becoming harder and harder to find good sites.” Let’s hope other state attorney generals get on board. Bit by bit, piece by piece, we are making progress against the black market business of online piracy.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Piracy
Business models may be evolving, but the need for action against online piracy hasn’t
Unless you’re Rip Van Winkle, and as zombie-soaked Netflix binge viewers will attest, it’s become pretty clear that changes are afoot in Hollywood and beyond. Now some of Hollywood’s biggest players are chiming in to confirm it.
During a panel on the Future of Entertainment at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. producer/director Stephen Spielberg grabbed headlines when he predicted there’d be a “meltdown” in the movie industry Spielberg was joined on the panel by producer/director George Lucas and Don Mattrick, President of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business. According to Variety, both filmmakers predicted a shift in Hollywood’s business model:
“They’re going for the gold,” said Lucas of the studios. “But that isn’t going to work forever. And as a result they’re getting narrower and narrower in their focus. People are going to get tired of it. They’re not going to know how to do anything else.”
Spielberg noted that because so many forms of entertainment are competing for attention, they would rather spend $250 million on a single film than make several personal, quirky projects.
Spielberg said that his own recent successful film “Lincoln” was almost an HBO project rather than a theatrical release and that in the future, such projects would most likely end up on TV, not in cinemas. He added:
…there’s eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.
His comments do not really come as a surprise. With the advent of VOD and other distribution options, more and more filmmakers, indie and established, are eschewing theatrical release and moving toward these new outlets. Many view it as liberating.
Producer/director Jane Campion’s recent 7 part mini-series, “Top of the Lake” that premiered in March on the Sundance Channel, (and is now streaming on Netflix) typifies the trend–one that’s opened new creative avenues for filmmakers. In an interview with Vulture.com earlier this year, Campion explained:
It goes back to being influenced by some very early brave television makers, like David Milch of Deadwood. I remember seeing that show and going, “Oh my God, they are making this on television?” It made me reassess my view of what was possible anywhere. It felt like they were able to be braver and have a dialogue with the audience which was a lot more vigorous in a way than with film, where it feels like you have to pander to the audience a bit more to get them out of their houses. There’s all these people sitting at home with their beautiful flat-screens already waiting for something exciting to happen. I thought I could have a place there. I could try, anyway.
As for Hollywood, the move toward bigger films guaranteed to bring in big bucks at the box office is nothing new. As theater-going audiences know, the tried and true trend of sequels and blockbusters is where it’s at. Niche films that have a dubious box office value are relegated to limited runs or bypass theatrical release altogether. Spielberg and Lucas’ remarks only confirm the obvious. In his NY Times magazine piece last summer, “How Does the Film Industry Actually Make Money,” Adam Davidson explained:
People have predicted the demise of the film industry since the dawn of TV and, later, the appearance of VHS, cable and digital piracy. But Fabrizio Perretti, a management professor at the Università Bocconi in Italy, says that Hollywood is now actually destroying itself. Because it’s harder to get financing and audiences, companies are competing to make bigger, costlier films while eliminating risk, which is why ever-more movies are based on existing intellectual property. Eighteen of the all-time 100 top-grossing movies (adjusted for inflation) were sequels, and more than half of those were released since 2000.
With quality entertainment available at the touch of a remote in one’s living room, why bother with a movie theater at all? George Lucas made this prediction:
You’re going to end up with fewer theaters, bigger theaters with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies will cost 50 bucks or 100 or 150 bucks, like what Broadway costs today, or a football game. It’ll be an expensive thing. … (The movies) will sit in the theaters for a year, like a Broadway show does. That will be called the ‘movie’ business.”
“There’ll be big movies on a big screen, and it’ll cost them a lot of money. Everything else will be on a small screen. It’s almost that way now. ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Red Tails’ barely got into theaters. You’re talking about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas can’t get their movies into theaters.
The small screen and VOD options are generating new viewing habits like binge-viewing and time shifting and have created an increased demand for fresh, long form programming. While these changing business models will influence what we see, and where we see it, there are certain questions that remain–including what the impact of digital piracy will be?
Sunday’s season finale for HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” became the most widely pirated TV episode ever. For some, the rampant piracy simply represents a sign of success, but can the same be said for productions that don’t fall into the massive hit category?
For indie filmmakers, these emerging business models provide both promise and peril. As we move forward into this brave new world of cinema, we need to find a way to protect content creators from the ravages of digital theft. To that end, the actual method of distribution doesn’t matter as much as a creator’s ability to reach an audience and earn a living. If left un-checked, digital piracy will continue to undermine artists and audiences alike. Our brave new world of engaging VOD content risks becoming predictable and homogenous.
A “meltdown” as Spielberg called it, is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as what emerges is a vibrant model that fosters innovation, and is viable for audiences and creators alike. Filmmaking has always been a marriage of business and art, but as hearings on copyright reform in Congress approach, let’s hope lawmakers understand that no matter the business model, artists remain at the core of our creative culture, and theirs are livelihoods are worth protecting.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy, Politics, Tech
Surprise, surprise…Google is once again in the spotlight for its role in linking to websites that promote illegal activities. In a statement released Thursday, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood charged that the search giant facilitates commerce in counterfeit goods and drugs online. Hood is co-chair of the National Association of Attorney General’s intellectual property committee. In the press release issued by his office, he outlined the issues:
…Google’s search algorithm often leads to sites known to sell counterfeit goods being at the top of the Google search results. Additionally, attorneys general are concerned that some of the sites selling counterfeit goods are advertising with Google.
“On every check we have made, Google’s search engine gave us easy access to illegal goods including websites which offer dangerous drugs without a prescription, counterfeit goods of every description, and infringing copies of movies, music, software and games,” said Attorney General Hood. “This behavior means that Google is putting consumers at risk and facilitating wrongdoing, all while profiting handsomely from illegal behavior.”
Hood sent a letter to Google’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Page inviting him to attend a national meeting of the attorneys general on June 18 in Boston to address the group’s concerns, categorized as follows:
- Content Removal – Google claims to only remove content from its search results in a narrow set of circumstances. The phrase “narrow set of circumstances” seems misleading. Google’s own policies on child exploitation state, “we block search results that lead to child pornography. This is a legal requirement and the right thing to do.” However, Google also removes other types of content. For instance, Google removes content from its German portal that glorifies the Nazi party on google.de or insults religion on google.co.in in India. Why will Google not remove websites or de-index known websites that purport to sell prescription drugs without a prescription or provide pirated content? Content removal can be done, but it appears Google is unwilling to remove content related to the purchase of prescription drugs without a prescription or the downloading of pirated movies and songs.
- Auto Complete – Google claims in its April 19th letter that “the predictions that appear in auto complete are an algorithmic reflection of query terms that are popular with our users and on the internet. Google does not manually select these terms or determine what queries are considered related to each other.” This statement is misleading. For example, a user cannot type in “free child” and receive an auto complete of the words “porn” or “pornography.” Google blocks an auto complete of the phrase “free child porn.” However, the phrase “buy oxycodone online” is autocompleted with the words “no prescription cod.” Google states in its April 19th letter that removing generic terms such as “prescription” or “online” is vastly overbroad. The issue is not about these words as stand-alone search terms, but phrases that facilitate known illegal behavior. For example, if you type in “buy oxycod,” the auto complete will provide “buy oxycodone online no prescription cod” as one of the choices. Another example is typing in “watch movies free so” and auto complete supplies “watch movies free solar.” Solarmovie is a known rogue website. The suggested search term by Google, “solar,” results in extensive sites containing infringing content on the first page of results. Can Google not remove phrases from auto complete such as “buy oxycodone online no prescription cod” or “watch movies free solar” without removing stand-alone terms?
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notices – Google has repeatedly stated that “sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.” However, websites that continue to appear very prominently in Google search results are the same websites highly listed on Google’s Transparency Report. For example, single searches for a popular new DVD released film results in the website torrentz.eu on the first hit of the search. Torrentz.eu has received over 2,103,239 URL removal requests according to Google’s Transparency Report.
- Role of search engines in curbing sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals – Google does not mention the role of “search” at all in response to this question implying that search is not an issue of concern despite what is mentioned above. Moreover, Google does not mention its platform YouTube and the role of search and advertising on YouTube in promoting illegal activities. For example, users can search for and view videos purporting to sell prescription drugs without a prescription and other illegal activities all while viewing paid advertisements. What steps is Google taking to address advertising in conjunction with illicit videos on YouTube?
If reading this triggers a sense of deja vu, don’t worry– you’re not crazy. Less than 2 years ago, in August of 2011, Google agreed to a 500 million dollar settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over online advertisements for illegal Canadian pharmacies. According to the NY Times:
Google entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the government last week over the use of its AdWords program by Canadian pharmacies that helped them sell prescription drugs in the United States in violation of a federal law, 21 U.S.C. § 331(a). That law prohibits causing the “introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any food, drug, device, tobacco product, or cosmetic that is adulterated or misbranded.
In addition to its role facilitating the trafficking of illegal and counterfeit drugs, Google’s ongoing relationship to illegal pirate movie sites has also been well established. Not only does the search giant continue to feature pirate websites high in its search results, but its YouTube and Blogger sites have also become efficient tools in online theft’s infrastructure.
In his statement Mr. Hood pointed out Google’s reluctance to regulate its own offerings and asked, as so many have before him, why is it that Google manages to block certain auto-complete phrases related to child porn or the Nazi party (on their German portal Google.de) but fails do so when it comes to other illegal, counterfeit content online?
The question of what companies like Google can and/or should do when it comes to illegal or harmful content was brought into sharp relief recently when another Silicon Valley giant, Facebook, was scrutinized for its refusal to act against pages that promoted misogynist and violent “hate speech” against women.
The NY Times featured a piece By Tanzina Vega and Leslie Kaufman “The Distasteful Side of Social Media Puts Advertisers on Their Guard” that examined the balance between free speech and civic responsibility. They aptly noted: “With the money, they are discovering, comes responsibility,” According to the story, YouTube officials claim to be pro-active when it comes to controlling where advertising appears:
YouTube also has mechanisms that give advertisers some control over where their brands appear. “When we become aware of ads that are showing against sensitive content, we immediately remove them,” Lucas Watson, the company’s vice president for video online global sales, wrote in an e-mail. “We also give advertisers control to target specific content, and they can choose to block ads against certain content categories or individual videos.”
The key here is “when we become aware.” The real question for YouTube and Google’s other services (search, Blogger, AdSense) is why isn’t the company pro-active to prevent these abuses rather than reactive? Preventing abuse of its products is not censorship; it’s the responsible thing to do.
via http://www.fairsearch.org/
Google’s reluctance to take decisive action seems to demonstrate that despite half-billion dollar fines and ongoing scrutiny from governments around the world, profits remain paramount, no matter the source.
Unfortunately, these days it seems that Google’s not alone in looking the other way. Just last month shipping giant UPS had to cough up a 40 million dollar settlement for knowingly distributing shipments for illegal online pharmacies.
Enabling trafficking in illegal products is illegal. The time for Google to clean house is long overdue. The question is, will it do so voluntarily or will it have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table? If past is prologue then my guess is that it will be the latter.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Piracy, Politics, Tech
The Silicon Valley giant debates, deflects and downplays its role in facilitating and profiting from online piracy
Google’s ongoing role in facilitating (and profiting from ) online piracy was back in the spotlight this week thanks to a debate held this past Tuesday, May 28th, at the University of Westminster in London. The debate,“Follow The Money: Can The Business Of Ad-Funded Piracy Be Throttled?” was sponsored Music Tank, a university business network and included musician (and blogger) David Lowery; BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) boss Geoff Taylor; Theo Bertram, Google UK policy manager ; Alexandra Scott, public policy manager at the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK; and James Barton, artist manager at The Blue Team.
The presence of a Google representative at a debate on this issue was itself newsworthy, and I might add, overdue. The evening’s discussion on the issue of ad supported piracy (summarized by Musically.com here) seemed to be focused on two main questions: who was responsible and what could be done about it.
David Lowery opened the evening’s discussion and framed a central problem with ad-sponsored piracy this way:
If the future of music really is access to songs rather than owning as many as we do nowadays, those services are all advertising-supported, and they’re competing with these illegitimate sites for these ads…Spotify and Pandora should have probably rightfully got that advertising money.
This is a key point. Online piracy harms content creators (across all disciplines) because it dilutes the market for legitimate consumption and siphons income away from creators and to the pirates (and their enablers). Online advertising revenue gives online pirates an advantage. The thieves can monetize stolen content at zero cost while the creators, who’ve expended capital to create the content, are forced to compete against free versions of their own product. Without income from online advertising, online piracy would not be viable on the scale that it is today.
When it was Google’s turn, per usual, Google was Google as Theo Bertram carefully paid lip-service to the notion that the search giant is proactive in the fight against piracy–citing how much it cost them to implement Content ID on YouTube (30 million) and assuring the audience that “If people have got content up there that is unlicensed and infringing, that would be a breach of our rules,”
Sure, it’s a “breach” of Google’s rules, but the point is, so what? As I have explained numerous times–when confronted with users who routinely and repeatedly break the rules–Google often looks the other way. I would have liked to ask Mr. Bertram how many times does it take for a Blogspot.com pirate site to be reported before Google will remove it? Just how many times does a YouTube user making money for themselves and Google off stolen content have to be reported before the account is terminated? Google refuses to say.
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Blogger hosted pirate movie site
Google may have created a “transparency report” that lists takedown requests received for its web searches, but when it comes to the inner workings of how it polices Blogger, AdSense and YouTube there’s little transparency–just continued obfuscation.
While Google’s equivocation was not unexpected, equally frustrating was Alexandra Scott’s attempt to explain why online ad services are so inept when it comes to keeping content off illegal sites:
This is a huge industry. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of players here. It’s not always obvious to those players where that advertising is going. There’s a huge amount of work that we’re undertaking to address that.
Often those middlemen are helping to make advertising more efficient, more targeted and more relevant…I don’t think we want to do away with that, because that innovation is helping to drive the business… Obviously there are concerns about where that advertising is going to appear… It’s not something that’s easy to address: there’s no one-size fits all.
Yep, there it is again, that word “innovation” which–in today’s debate about piracy–is habitually employed as shield by those who wish to avoid taking action (or responsibility) for their role in it. In their world it seems that “responsibility” and “innovation” are considered to be mutually exclusive concepts.
Pop-up ads found on a Google-hosted Blogger website in March of 2013 including a number of name brands.
The oft-used ad industry excuse that “it’s not always obvious to those players where that advertising is going…” is also growing old. As I’ve pointed out many times, advertisers in the print and TV industry are keenly aware of where their ads appear and what editorial/entertainment content they partner with. How is that these same advertisers allow this editorial control to go missing on the internet? Is this “innovation” at work or are advertisers so desperate not to miss out on potential customers that blanketing the web with their promotions is seen as the only way to compete in this brave new world? Scott tried to address this conundrum, but ultimately fell back on the same, tired excuse:
Coca-Cola may say ‘we only want to work on a white-list basis, we only want to appear against certain publishers…They don’t want to be going on these sites. They’re just not always aware of the issue. They don’t necessarily know it’s happening until there’s a crisis… I don’t think that people actively seek out these sites to go and advertise on… Eyeballs isn’t the only thing for advertising: it’s all about context.
While Ms. Scott tried to explain why ad sponsored piracy is a difficult nut to crack, Mr. Bertram seemed more than willing to direct most of the responsibility for ad placement on the clients themselves:
…the only way you get that scale is if you get the big brands…Thus, the responsibility lies with brands to take responsibility, even though there is more work to do for Google in policing how and where ads are served on its network.
It’s not Google’s job to go around the web to declare whether sites are legal or illegal, but if Coca-Cola comes to us and says here’s a list of 500 dynamic sites, and we don’t want you to place ads on those… that’s a slightly different thing. It’s almost a marketing thing for the brand…Getting them to say ‘I’m going to be really clear with you: I don’t want you to put advertising on these sites, I do want you to put advertising on these sites’.
Mr. Bertram also returned to Google’s (not-so-effective) efforts to lower search results for sites known to offer illegal download links:
We’re trying to dampen that in the search results…so we are doing a bit of that. I am an optimist, in that search will get better, and be able to serve people with the results exactly that they want, and to do so utterly lawfully as well.
One nagging question that wasn’t addressed is was how much revenue Google generates from its connections to online piracy (and counterfeit product sites) via its various entities (AdSense, Blogger, YouTube, search, et al). It’s a significant question in this debate , but unfortunately wasn’t addressed.
Tap dancing aside, I suppose it’s a sign of progress that Google was willing to send a representative to the debate. There finally seems to be a growing recognition that ad money is a driving force behind online piracy. As I wrote three years ago when I began blogging about this topic:
Online piracy isn’t about altruism, it’s about income. Today’s technology allows web pirates to steal content and monetize that content with a click of a mouse. Meanwhile, “legit” companies encourage and facilitate this theft while also profiting from it (ad service providers, advertisers and payment processors). The time has come for reasonable measures to be taken to discourage this theft. Content creators and consumers will benefit. Only the pirates and those who profit from their theft will lose.
In the process of scouring the web for the thousands of illegal download links and online streams of our film (more than 55,000 documented to date) I quickly discovered that various, theoretically legit companies, seemed to be (indirectly) generating income through the placement advertising on websites featuring streams and download links to pirated films. In addition, and most troubling, is that fact these ads generate income for operators of these pirate websites and add to generous profit totals for ad providers.
At the end of the debate, Geoff Taylor noted that some progress was being made in efforts to tackle the problem, “to their credit Google and the IAB are working very closely with the music and film industries.”
Blue Team manager James Barton also struck a hopeful tone:
How refreshing that finally in 2013 we’re able to have a conversation with members of big tech and big music industry where we can find common ground, and look for a pragmatic solution to the piracy problem…
Perhaps it’s a matter of putting lipstick on a pig, but after watching this play out over these past three years, it appears we still have a long way to go. Recognizing there is a problem is step one, now let’s do something about it.
It’s no coincidence that Google’s attempting to grab the tech news headlines with blog posts this week trumpeting the company’s ongoing efforts to fight the scourge of online child porn and illegal pharmacies. Google’s links to illegal and unsavory activities is long established, but with increased public scrutiny thanks to the NSA snooping stories and declarations like that of Mississippi Attorney General Tom Hood asserting Google’s search aids online criminals, it seems that Googleiath’s powers that be felt the time had come for some much-needed reputation burnishing.
