Google disappears torrent terms from autocomplete search results Google has been true to its pre-Christmas word about getting ever so slightly tougher on copyright infringement by killing some terms users look up via its ubiquitous search engine. The company said in December that it would play nice with the big name record labels, TV networks, and movie studios, by providing better …
...is someone to launch a pirate server into space with wireless Internet capabilities. Just like the Radio Caroline offshore broadcasts of the 1960's. Sure they will pass laws against that too, but unless they want to deploy an anti-satellite system to kill it off it should be fine for a few decades of vacuum packed goodness.
Just thought. Photocopiers can potentially breach copyrights! Lets outlaw them too. Similarly, fax machines, scanners and while we are at it, lets block this bloke too:
http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/
Gosh knows hew might be used for some nefarious copyright infringement in the future so lets do a complete job of it.
Pah...
There are plenty of compromised Windows PCs out there seeding torrents completely unknown to their legitimate owners. My sources tell me it's a small scale activity done by crackers not interested in running botnets for other purposes, but who like their favourite movies and music to be made widely available to the world at large, without the seeding being traceable to them personally. Also helps further to discredit the copyright enforcers when they try threatening and suing innocent people who have'nt done anything.
Well, having them in autocomplete gives the impression that Google is suggesting or encouraging this sort of thing, so taking those terms out strikes an appropriate balance between attempting to censor the web on the one hand, and visibly suggesting piracy to people on the other.
So I don't see this as something to be concerned about. It's a reasonable response that will help to avoid a situation in which U.S. courts might force Google to take undesirable actions.
It equally hinders those who want to report illegal file sharing, so the sum total is bugger all, really.
And don't forget, it also hinders those who want to buy a copy of the 1926 Garbo movie.
In all, it's a bit like curtailing the auto-fill on "rucksack" so as not to encourage suicide bombers.
Well, as the first poster so inelegantly almost got near to touching on, it is slightly worrying where this kinda of thing could go.
And even though it is evidently a token gesture from Google towards the music and movie industry it is still a step in the direction of censoring the web based on the demands of big business, which if taken to anything more than a token gesture is a concern I think worth worrying about.
The firefox search field still functions as original. So if the censor those from the autocomplete that still leaves: non auto complete version of Google, mobile google.com. search fields in various browsers that are set to google, scroogle, google toolbars, other search engines, TPB, Extratorrent, etc. Yes Google has really got us by the short and curlys on torrents.
The precedent however is what is spooky. I dont like that they can make an agreement with <entity> and then certain words return no results. Good news is that it is not a mandate by the gov.com....well yet at least so it leaves it open to other providers to fill that void.
Maybe they only kill the results on .com, not .co.uk?
In any case, even if I was looking for a torrent and Google won't help, I'd ask Yahoo/MSN/etc, no biggy. And surely the torrents indexing files themselves have their own search tool. Maybe more a gesture of goodwill on Google's part?
Still against their sworn neutrality stance, I have to agree with that though.
Yes...... But......
If you compare the volume of copyright infringing content available via a torrent and legitimate content available via a torrent it might lead you to the conclusion that torrents are almost exclusively allowing access to copyright infringing targets.
Under pressure from copyright holders, google has tweaked it's auto complete to be less likely to offer potentially copyright infringing material, the ability to still google Linux distros shows it's probably appropriate.
As many people have succintly pointed out, torrents have many legitimate uses. However (as always) the man is about 3 years out of date. I've noticed an increasing trend amongst filesharers to simply use a filehosting service (Rapidshare springs to mind although there are many others). Break the file in question into bite-size chunks. Anonymise them by calling them "nnuwenfuhfewifh.r00" and so on, and then post the links in various online forums.
Filehosting is cheap, and has the advantage that unlike torrents, the files will always be available. Hardcore freetards will pay the filehoster to have multiple downloads/no limits, and ocassional freetards will simply take their time.
If you make the online forums subscription only, it becomes very very hard to police.
This system has the added advantage that there is never any case where a downloaders PC can be considered to be an uploader - so cases where torrentors are accused of "making available" copyrighted work disappear.
Also, because the file is (typically) password zipped *and* broken into chunks, there's no way the hosting company can know what it is.
Oh well, at least google have removed ".torrent" from autocomplete ....
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