by Ellen Seidler | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Film, Google, Law, Piracy
When searching for this film’s official website Google search instead lists a notorious pirate site at #1. It links to a full, illegal stream of the movie.
Google’s promise to fight piracy on its search engine is pure baloney
Click the #1 result and immediately you’ll find a full stream of our film
I was updating my film’s website earlier this week and so randomly went to Google to see where it would show up in search results. I figured that, given it’s the official website for the film, it would be at or near the top of the results. Boy was I wrong…When I used in the search terms And Then Came Lola website the first result was a pirate site offering pirated streams of the film with a single click. In fact, the actual website for our film was nowhere to be found. Instead the first page of results included several sites that featured pirated streams of our film.
Yeah Google, you’re surely doing everything you can to fight online piracy aren’t you?
Google’s convoluted web takedown DMCA form requires 8 steps
Google moves pirate links to a safe haven on the Chilling Effects database
I guess it’s time to visit that handy dandy DMCA online takedown form that Google–so graciously–makes creators whose work is stolen use. Of course, in order to get to the DMCA page, one must click through 7 pages of crap, then login to Google, before–at last– filling out a tedious online form, It would, of course, be much more efficient to send an email (since I already have DMCA template set up) but let’s face it, Google has NO desire (nor incentive) to make the process an easy one.
In the meantime, maybe the good folks at Google responsible for fine-tuning search algorithms to downgrade pirate sites in search results need to go back to the drawing board. Remember this B.S?
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
At the bottom of the first pages of search results Google offers users these suggestions for finding (pirated) copies of the film online
Google search results not only put a pirate result in first place, but at the bottom of the page offer these handy suggested search phrases that also offer ways find illegal streams or downloads of my film.
BTW the pirate site solarmovie (and its ever-changing cornucopia of domain suffixes) that pops up #1 IS a notorious pirate host, impervious to any direct DMCA requests. It’s been reported thousands of times to Google….Why does it still end up as a #1 result??? If this is punishing pirate sites one can only wonder what praising them would look like?
Google forces me to acknowledge that they will send my DMCA to Chilling Effects so that the pirate link will live in despite my efforts
Google’s search DMCA takedown process is a joke
Of course, even after I go to ALL the trouble of requesting that Google remove the links it won’t disappear. In a nifty sleight of hand the Google team will simply move it to Chilling Effects so that users can still easily find the pirated stream(s) online. This entire DMCA takedown scheme is a fraud makes a mockery of the DMCA and destroys creators’ ability to protect their work from online theft. Recently the USPTO organized a working group comprised creators and service providers to address inefficiencies in the DMCA takedown process. This past Tuesday the group released its findings in a document, “DMCA Notice-and-Takedown Processes”. While it could be considered progress that the various parties are talking, there’s still plenty of evidence that the DMCA is badly the broken and due for a major overhaul.
Here’s a sneak peek of Part II of this (never-ending) story illustrating how Google’s search suggestions, mentioned above, also point directly to stolen (pirated) copies of my movie.
by Ellen Seidler | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Law, Piracy
Notorious piracy emporium, Pirate Bay is down–for now–after a raid on its servers by Swedish authorities, but what does that mean for the future of piracy?
If you read Caitlin Dewey’s piece in today’s Washington Post “You can take down Pirate Bay, but you can’t kill the Internet it created,” the ship has already sailed and creators may as well give up. Per Dewey:
…even if TPB doesn’t return, the politics and the conventions it advanced — that content should be free, and if you torrent, they can be! — will be very difficult to eradicate.
You may be able to shut down Pirate Bay, but good luck raiding the Internet that Pirate Bay created.
If she’s talking torrents, then yes, we’ll never eradicate them. The laissez-faire attitude of lawmakers over the past decade has allowed online theft to flourish un-checked and spawned a well-entrenched piracy eco-system. However, despite the sentiment Ms. Dewey suggests–all is not lost. Whether The Pirate Bay continues to exist is beside the point.
Content consumers are willing to pay; they just aren’t willing to wait
Consumers of piracy seem driven by two, somewhat separate, catalysts. On the one hand, people download content out of a desire to see, hear, or read it. This is the part of piracy that most people can empathize with, particularly when it comes to a TV show that might not be available where they live. Individuals who want to “stick it to the man” populate the other segment. They download stuff–not because they are necessarily fans–but because they feel entitled to free stuff. “F#*! Hollywood…information should be free” is their battle cry. They have neither appreciation nor concern for those they are stealing from–people who make their living by creating the films, music, and books we enjoy.
Now, obviously there’s not much we can do about the latter group of piracy aficionados, but with regard to the first group–the more important audience–we are doing something. Over the past few years there’s been an effort to develop new outlets to satisfy consumer entertainment demands. Most people who want access are willing to pay a reasonable amount for it. Netflix only costs $8.99 a month, or in modern terms, the cost is approximately = to 4 and a half cups of Starbucks (grande) coffee. In other words, it’s not a budget buster.
Not a Netflix subscriber, well check out the handy new search portal Wheretowatch.com to find out where you can find favorite TV Show or movie. When I searched for the BBC series “Broadchurch” I found I could watch it via Netflix, XBox, Amazon or Target. If I want to watch the acclaimed indie film “Pariah” I can rent or buy via the same outlets in addition to Flixster and iTunes.
The key here is to make it easy to find, reasonably priced and available worldwide. There’s still work to be done in achieving the latter, as territorial broadcast rights and release windows can still be a roadblock, but that is improving and I can see a future, that’s not far off, where day and date releases become the norm and release windows are synchronized across the globe. As I noted in an earlier post on this blog:
…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.
As for those who get off on grabbing free stuff (kinda like looters), that’s a mentality that will be difficult to change. The good news is that most people have better things to do than download torrents or click through dozens of ads to watch a crappy stream– so, if creators and distributors can continue to make progress on streamlining access, progress against piracy will continue to be made.
Of course, it also helps when the legal system can gently divert people into taking the legit path. Takedowns of sites like Pirate Bay help this effort. Operators of pirate torrent sites like The Pirate Bay or cyberlockers like Megaupload are not in the piracy business out of altruism–they’re in it to make money. Running a piracy website is profitable and those who do so deserve to be taken out of action. Other cogs in piracy’s profit machine–advertisers and payment processors–should also remain under scrutiny.
It would also help if our lawmakers worked on crafting legislation to help creators protect their livelihoods. Revisiting the terms for DMCA “safe harbor” might be a good place to begin.
Piracy remains a “well-entrenched” threat to a wide-range of content creators, but unlike Ms. Dewey, I am not ready to throw my hands up and say, “I give up.” Neither are most creators I know. We are not blind to the reality of today’s online culture that espouses a “free for me” attitude, but our livelihoods depend speaking out, and fighting back, and we will continue to do so.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Google, Law, Piracy, Politics, Tech
Censorship is a dirty word, laden with negative connotations and so it’s not surprising to see the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) dust if off (again) for use in its ongoing PR efforts to undermine rights of creators who use legal means to protect their works from online theft. The “censoring speech online” hyperbole was an effective battle cry during the SOPA debate, so why not use the same rhetoric to gin up opposition to artists’ rights and copyright law?
This time EFF’s sites are set on the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law (passed in 1998) that set up a system whereby copyright holders could facilitate the removal of their pirated content from websites that publish it without authorization. Yesterday Maira Sutton launched a salvo on the EFF blog ominously titled, Copyright Law as a Tool for State Censorship of the Internet. Sutton warns:
The DMCA has become a global tool for censorship, precisely because it was designed to facilitate the removal of online media…
Per usual, her post is written as though online piracy is a benign, practically non-existent problem. In fact, not once does she address the ways in which copyright infringement damages damages filmmakers, authors, musicians, photographers and other creators. Don’t people working in these fields deserve protection too? Apparently not, at least as far as the EFF is concerned.
In EFF’s world, copyright itself is a a form of censorship
Conveniently ignoring the scourge of online piracy, Sutton expresses alarm that various nations around the world are using the DMCA as a template managing copyright infringement on the web. She calls it “state-mandated internet censorship” and warns of “harsher” copyright enforcement. Harsher relative to what? At the moment, many countries do very little to enforce copyright law online so use of the term seems a tad hyperbolic. Perhaps a worldwide standardization of copyright infringement protection law might be good practice for an online eco-system that has essentially become border-free.
Sutton lists 9 instances in which content was removed for allegedly political reasons via a DMCA notice. Not to minimize any wrongdoing in these particular instances, but has Ms. Sutton bothered to examine the millions of legitimate removals that occur each week worldwide? In any enforcement system there exist errors and potential for abuse, but the the truth is that the volume of legit DMCA notices far outweighs illegitimate ones.
No system is perfect. I’ve long been critical of the DMCA, though not for the reasons Ms. Sutton cites. In my experience, the intent of the “safe harbor” provision of the law is routinely sidestepped as tech companies (like EFF funder Google) continue to reap billions from unauthorized online content theft.
From a creator’s perspective the DMCA is clumsy and ultimately weighted against rights holders. Go ahead and upload a movie to YouTube. Yeah, there’s fine print under “suggestions” that politely asks, “Please be sure not to violate others’ copyright or privacy rights,” but users don’t actually have to submit any proof of ownership. It’s the job of rights holders to search for, and submit a DMCA notice to request the removal of their content day after day after day.
If an uploader responds with a counter-notice, it’s the rights holder who has to go to court to enforce a takedown. Most indie creators don’t have the money to initiate a lawsuit so in many cases it’s the uploader that–in this game–gets the last word as the content ends up back online. The default mode for YouTube and the rest of the web is “go for it.” In the end, the DMCA is all we have to fight back.
EFF’s own Chilling Effects provides an efficient search engine to find pirated links online
Ms. Sutton also asks for more transparency in the process. Fine by me as long as it doesn’t include operating a “database” that serves as a de facto search engine for pirated content like the EFF’s own Chilling Effects. Using their database of DMCA takedown notices (sent to Google and a few others) it’s easy to find direct links to pirated content around the globe. This sort of transparency is really just playing a shell game with pirate links. Remove pirate links from Google and they receive new life, and traffic, via Chilling Effects.
Of course Ms. Sutton doesn’t mention this fact, nor does she address how Chilling Effects’ republishing of reported links in their entirety is essentially an F-You to all the creators–like me–who are working within the confines of established law to protect our creative work from profiteers. The Chilling Effects database could easily provide transparency while redacting a portion of the pirate links, but its apologists choose not to. That’s not transparency, that’s facilitating theft. Apparently that’s A-OK in their book.
Speaking of “transparency,” it’s worth pointing out that Ms. Sutton also conveniently fails to acknowledge her organization’s own ties to the tech industry, entities that would have a vested interest in seeing the DMCA gutted. Her omission undermines any credibility she may have in terms of her overall arguments. Until she, and those she represents are willing to be transparent about their funding sources, and how this money influences their mission, how can we take her complaints seriously?
Censorship is a word that goes both ways. Clearly, when it comes to political speech it’s not a good thing, but neither is a system, seemingly supported by the EFF, where online piracy is allowed to run rampant. When the livelihoods of creative artists are undermined, their rights are, in fact, being suppressed.
The world exists in shades of gray, but in the EFF’s, it’s black and white–a world where censorship and copyright are considered synonyms.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Google, Law, Tech
Google removes pirate links, Chilling Effects reposts them
In the wake of Google’s move to allegedly downgrade search results linking to notorious pirate websites, it’s worth looking at another de facto search engine, closely linked to Google, that so far seems impervious to calls for change. In many ways it renders Google’s removal of reported infringing links, moot. The “search engine” I’m referring to is none other than Chilling Effects, a Google supported DMCA database operated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) and a consortium of law clinics.
This database archiving DMCA takedown notices reported to Google (and a few other service providers) was supposedly created to provide “transparency” for the DMCA process, but unfortunately it’s also gained a reputation for being used as a de facto cudgel by service providers like Google to dissuade rights holders sending takedown notices. After all, before one sends a takedown notice to Google one must acknowledge this warning:
Please note that a copy of each legal notice we receive is sent to a third-party which may publish and annotate it (with your personal information removed). As such, the content submitted in this form will be forwarded to Chilling Effects (http://www.chillingeffects.org) for publication…For products like Google Web Search, a link to your published notice will be displayed in Google’s search results in place of the removed content.
Using Chilling Effects to find pirated music and movies is easier than using Google search
What’s even more troubling is the content of the database itself. Yes, Google might reluctantly remove a pirate link from search results, but the infringing link lives on–conveniently available via Chilling Effects. In effect, the database acts a shadow site for pirate links removed from Google search. Using Chilling Effects to search for pirated movies and music is actually easier that using Google. Using Google, one has to search through various results in order to actually find valid links. Meanwhile, search results on Chilling Effects provide results that offer infringing links in a convenient, clean lists. Great for would-be thieves–not so great for content creators.
This morning, using the Chilling Effects database search engine, I was able to quickly find active pirated streams for the recently released movie, Dracula Untold*. All I had to do was type in the title, click my mouse, and choose a link from the DMCA notices that popped up in the results. I chose to use a DMCA notice sent to Google by NBC Universal that reported 762 infringing links. See the graphic below to see how just how simple it was.
Chilling Effects’ refusal to redact the actual infringing links included in DMCA notices has long been a source of contention. Now, however, it seems that some clever piracy entrepreneurs have taken it to a new, efficient extreme by creating a search engine that can leverage links reported via DMCA notices stored by Chilling Effects to provide users with access to pirated movies and music.
According to TorrentFreak a site called FileSoup offers both a search engine for (removed) torrent links, but has also developed new technology dubbed Necromancer that according to claims, will crawl the Chilling Effects database and Google’s own transparency report for DMCA notices it has received:
The operators of FileSoup also addressed indirect search engine takedowns. Every week rightsholders force Google to remove torrent listings from its search results. For this problem FileSoup says it has a solution, and a controversial one it is too.
The team behind the site say they have developed a web crawler designed to pull the details of content subjected to DMCA notices from two sources – Google’s Transparency Report and the Chilling Effects Clearing House. From here the links are brought back to life.
“We created a technology that crawls DMCA notices and resurrects the torrent webpage under a different URL so it can appear in search results again. It was rather complicated to sharpen it, but eventually it works pretty well. We will use it on FileSoup.com for all the websites we proxy,” FileSoup explain.
Meanwhile, according to its website, Chilling Effects claims to be performing a public service:
Our goals are to educate the public, to facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and requests for removal–both legitimate and questionable–that are being sent to Internet publishers and service providers, and to provide as much transparency as possible about the “ecology” of such notices, in terms of who is sending them and why, and to what effect.
While its purported goals may appear laudable, one has to ask, why is it that an organization (run by a consortium of law school “clinics” and the Google-funded Electronic Frontier Foundation) can’t achieve its objective without also serving as backup source to find pirated content?
With Chilling Effects acting as a repository for pirate links removed from Google, what options do rights holders have now? We dutifully send DMCA notices to Google to protect our work from thieves, only to find our efforts are really an exercise in futility thanks to Chilling Effects? Are we supposed to send takedown notices to Chilling Effects to take down the very links we asked Google to remove in the first place? If we send a DMCA notice to Chilling Effects is it archived in the database too? Ultimately, Chilling Effects is really just a fun-house hall of mirrors where online thieves have the last laugh.
In crafting the DMCA, is this what lawmakers had in mind when they carved out a “safe harbor” provision? Does the Chilling Effects database really protect innovation online? At the moment, the site’s chief role seems to be as a resource for those who want to rip off creators. Chilling Effects is not working in the public’s interest, it’s working in the pirate’s.
*For the record, this is how I conducted my search using Chilling Effects database:
- Reviewed Rotten Tomatoes to find a current/popular film title.
- Went to Chilling Effects and entered film’s title (Dracula Untold) into search.
- Clicked randomly one of the first results in those infringing links listed.
- The DMCA notice I clicked on happened to be from NBCUniversal (to Google) and included 700+ links. I selected one near the top and it took me to a full stream of the film online.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Google, Piracy
Are Google claims that search isn’t a path to piracy about to bite the dust?
Headlines scream, “Google’s Search Changes Are Reportedly Destroying Top Pirate Sites!” and “Google’s New Search Downranking Hits Torrent Sites Hard.” Oh my gosh, can it be true? Does removing pirate links in search results really make a difference? Has traffic to pirate sites plummeted now that their infringing content is harder to find?
What about Google’s oft-repeated claim that its search engine does not drive traffic to pirate websites? Will Google apologists admit it–was Google wrong all this time? Just last week in an update to its report How Google Fights Piracy this assertion was repeated:
1. Search is not a major driver of traffic to pirate sites. [emphasis added] Google Search is not how music, movie, and TV fans intent on pirating media find pirate sites. All traffic from major search engines (Yahoo, Bing, and Google combined) accounts for less than 16% of traffic to sites like The Pirate Bay.17 In fact, several notorious sites have said publicly that they don’t need search engines, as their users find them through social networks, word of mouth, and other mechanisms.18 Research that Google co-sponsored with PRS for Music in the UK further confirmed that traffic from search engines is not what keeps these sites in business.19 These findings were confirmed in a recent research paper published by the Computer & Communications Industry Association.20
The “research paper” cited in the above quote, “The Search Fixation: Infringement, Search Results, and Online Content” also highlights the same claim:
The contention that disappearing undesirable entries from search results would substantially prevent piracy is flawed, however. The solutions to online infringement have little to do with search.
The study supposedly had stats to back this up:
Traffic statistics in 2011 indicated that a mere 15% of traffic to alleged “rogue sites” was referred by search…Evidence suggests that sites associated infringement receive relatively little traffic from search.
So what’s the truth? Has precipitous drop in traffic to pirates sites following Google’s downgrade shown, once and for all, that Google flacks were full of hot air? The answer to that question seems clear.
While this drop in traffic to sites like Kickass.to is welcome, unfortunately it doesn’t mean that pirate links have disappeared from Google search, not at all.
Well-known Pirate sites have been replaced in Google search by lesser known ones
The most notorious pirate sites may have disappeared from top results, but unfortunately they’ve been replaced by lesser known sites peddling the same stolen content. I wrote about this last week and TorrentFreak noticed the same trend:
A search for “Breaking Bad torrent” previously featured Kickass.to, Torrentz.eu and Isohunt.com on top, but these have all disappeared. Interestingly, in some cases their place has been taken by other less popular torrent sites.
Bottom line, it’s progress against the scourge of online piracy, but more work needs to be done by Google and other search engines.
BTW the pirate site solarmovie (and its ever-changing cornucopia of domain suffixes) that pops up #1 IS a notorious pirate host, impervious to any direct DMCA requests. It’s been reported thousands of times to Google….Why does it still end up as a #1 result??? If this is punishing pirate sites one can only wonder what praising them would look like?
