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, 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.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Law, Music, Piracy, Tech
Mega-pirate Kim Dotcom gets his digital content back, when do the stuff he’s stolen from us back?
A court in New Zealand has ordered authorities to return Kim Dotcom’s hard drives and digital material taken “illegally” during a raid in January of 2012. According to a story on stuff.co.nz:
A judge has ordered the police to sift through all digital material taken illegally from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and to return anything irrelevant to their investigation at their own cost.
Fine, he gets his stuff back. My question is–when do all the filmmakers, musicians, and authors get the stuff he stole from us and (and monetized) back?…or at least the $$$$ he made off it.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Piracy, Tech
Piracy promoted by Facebook and featuring ads served by U.S. based “Ad Council” for a U.S. government agency that’s supposed to protect American consumers
The 6th chapter of the popular movie franchise “The Fast and Furious“ premiered nationwide yesterday, and has already set new Memorial Day weekend box office records. This morning–less than 24 hours later– thanks to a Facebook, a link for a pirated version appeared on my computer screen.
I came across this particular link while having my wake-up coffee and checking my Facebook news feed. I’ll admit to having “liked” this Facebook movie page in the past so I could, in fact, monitor and research ongoing pirate activity.
The film’s speedy arrival onto pirate websites (and shared via a social media site like Facebook) is neither unexpected, nor surprising. I’m sure there are already thousands of pirated copies posted online throughout the globe, and dozens more shared via Facebook pages like this one. I’ve already written about this particular Facebook movie page, and others like it that promote illegal downloads. The reason I’m choosing to revisit it is because today’s scenario, with link appearing in my news feed, demonstrates once again how piracy theft is routinely enabled–and made increasingly efficient–by companies like Facebook.
Today, when I saw this post, I followed the link to the website to check it out. I found 2 working streams of the movie, one via the Russian site VK.com, a social media portal styled after Facebook. The online offering is riddled with advertising (including a pop-up from the United Way) but nonetheless, after clicking through the ads, there’s the film, in its entirety, streaming online. Granted, the copy was likely shot surreptitiously in a theater, but the quality is decent enough. The others “embeds” are actually decoys, carefully designed to mimic working streams in order to trick visitors into clicking, thus triggering a pop-up ad and generating more income for the site.
Ironically, one of the ads that popped up was for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency of the United States government, and another for the Shelter Pet Project. Both ads are apparently placed with the ad servicer by the Ad Council. On its website the organization describes its mission this way:
The Ad Council is a private, non-profit organization that marshals volunteer talent from the advertising and communications industries, the facilities of the media, and the resources of the business and non-profit communities to deliver critical messages to the American public.
Irony aside, the Ad Council’s involvement–and its servicing an ad for an official bureau of United States government (that’s supposed to protect American consumers)–demonstrates just how broken our system is. Were this criminal activity happening in the brick and mortar world I doubt it would be tolerated, at least not by U.S. law enforcement.
I am sure no one at the Consumer Protection Bureau is even aware that their ads blanket pirate websites, but therein lies the problem. Why not? Why are federal dollars being spent for advertisements on sites that offer up stolen goods? When did it become OK for advertisers, whether the U.S. government or not, to underwrite online theft? Just because the crime happens online, is it really OK that our tax dollars end up in the pockets of pirates? How is that the online economy is somehow exempt from legal scrutiny? Is this really the kind of “innovation” we want to encourage and protect?
Advertisements aside, another question should be asked of Facebook. Why should the Silicon Valley behemoth be allowed earn money off the promotion of stolen goods? The company is vigilant when it comes to removing photos of breast feeding mothers, but when it comes to removing pages dedicated to disseminating stolen goods, not so much?
Ads sponsored by the U.S. based Ad Council blanket this pirate website
As Congress moves forward to discuss copyright reform members may want to finally peek under this rock and take a look at what can be done to hold accountable those who–directly or indirectly–aid and abet online theft. Facebook….Ad Council….Uncle Sam….are you listening??? Looking the other way in response to ad sponsored piracy is not OK. Creative content, whether it be a Hollywood blockbuster like “The Fast and Furious” or an indie band’s latest release, should not be there for the taking by piracy profiteers.
The time for action and accountability is long overdue. The government, ad servers, and the entities that advertise on these pirate websites need to step up, admit we have a big problem, and deal with 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.
