Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

http://torrentfreak.com/google-starts-censoring-bittorrent-rapidshare-and-more-110126/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

by barredo • 15 years ago

217 97 15 years ago

torrentfreak.com

dholowiski• 15 years ago

It should be noted that despite the headline - Google is not censoring any search terms. They're just not allowing certain words in the search auto-complete. A controversial move to be sure, but something they've done with other words since the introduction of search auto complete

barredo2• 15 years ago

Well, I'll say "Google is not censoring any search results" but it is censoring any search terms, right?

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

No. It is declining to actively push certain terms on the user.

rhizome2• 15 years ago

Well, whatever they're doing it's never going to have any effect on blogspot, where the vast majority of filedrop blogs are located.

loup-vaillant• 15 years ago

Once upon a time, a frog lived in a pool of water. One day, the water began to slowly grow hot…

Uhhrrr2• 15 years ago

I take your meaning, but as to your metaphor... http://www.theatlantic.com/james-fallows/boiledfrog/?cid=140

radicaldreamer2• 15 years ago

Aren't there plenty of sexual terms that are already "censored" in the instant suggestions database? That hasn't affected anything so I doubt this will have any large scale impact on file sharing.

endtime• 15 years ago

Racial ones too, I believe.

marshray9• 15 years ago

It's one thing for them to refrain from auto-completing the users' first few letters with suggestions including the filthiest words in the language. That's quite understandable to me. After all, it seems unlikely that those results are what users ordinarily want and there is a very high attentional cost to offering them wrongly (from the UI perspective).

But in this case, they're filtering out perfectly ordinary words for perfectly legitimate network protocols and actual products. If I type "utorren" there's no reason Google should withhold the "t" other that pure evil search-term engineering.

It's incomprehensible to me that a company that refused to filter "democracy" in China will agree to demote "utorrent" in America.

jcr3• 15 years ago

Your claim that Google is not censoring search results is entirely unfounded. You are correct about filtering being done on auto-complete, but Google also filters the living snot out of results. They have always filtered results, and providing "relevant" pages for the given search terms is only one of their goals.

bigfudge• 15 years ago

It strikes me this could be a clever flack reducing measure. Censoring from autocomplete would be a good way of reducing the annoyance felt by content creators as they google their own title.

jeza• 15 years ago

The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps?

marshray9• 15 years ago

Could this be anything but a precursor to trying to filter out of the main search results?

smokeyj2• 15 years ago

So they censoring their auto-complete list, isn't that still censoring?

moultano• 15 years ago

Censoring whom?

harrybr• 15 years ago

Exactly. There's obviously a difference between Google actively suggesting a term that could encourage piracy, versus providing the results for people who already have that query in their mind and choose to submit it as a search.

amadvance• 15 years ago

"kill o" suggests "kill obama". Is Google encouraging to kill Obama ?

"kill osama bin laden" appears only with "kill os". Is this an hint of the Google priorities ?

These are obviously rhetorical questions.

giberson• 15 years ago

I'm kinda off-put about their decision to censor the software program titles, rather then say copyrighted illegal content. Obviously the former is the "easy" fix, while they should have approached the latter solution instead. And while this is only a censor on the autocomplete and instant search (neither of which I actively use) it does pave the way for eventual search result censoring.

Then again this could be a good thing for competitors. I can see a market open for a "censor free" search engine. Tagline "You're an adult, search like one". Hey... any entrepreneurs feel up for a new startup? wink wink nudge nudge

jcr3• 15 years ago

I misread your comment the first time through, but the misreading gave me a profound idea... "Why doesn't Google black-list the names of the copyrighted works?"

Food for thought.

wmf• 15 years ago

Why doesn't Google black-list the names of the copyrighted works?

Because they are probably available legitimately somewhere. Or the user might be looking for information about the work, not the work itself.

jemfinch• 15 years ago

> I'm kinda off-put about their decision to censor the software program titles, rather then say copyrighted illegal content.

Pardon, but are you really serious? Disregarding the obvious senselessness of the term "copyrighted illegal content", people search for book titles all the time. People search for software all the time. Half the stuff people search the Internet for is copyrighted or trademarked. The only reasonable way to stop suggesting torrents is to block on the names of torrent software.

corin_2• 15 years ago

Think we can all hear DuckDuckGo's next advertising campaign coming round the corner...

citricsquid2• 15 years ago

And after reading this comment (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2145939) it's guaranteed! </snark>

kkowalczyk• 15 years ago

DuckDuckGo doesn't have an instant search at all so even less-than-perfect Google's solution is better than DuckDuckGo's non-existent solution. I don't see what DuckDuckGo could advertise here.

corin_2• 15 years ago

Doesn't matter that they don't offer the exact same search, just needs general principle points to be made.

"We don't believe in censoring the web, so here's our promise to you: our entire service will always work 100% to give you what you're looking for."

"When you search with DuckDuckGo, you know that, no matter what you're looking for, you're receiving our very best."

"We know it's not our place to make it harder to search for certain topics, so we'll keep providing you with the best tools for the job, and leave you to chose how to use them."

etc.

cmars232• 15 years ago

That's funny, I consider DDG's lack of "Instant" a feature.

marshray9• 15 years ago

I know I just tried duckduckgo.com for the first time tonight. It didn't suck.

I also tried baidu.com, it has no problem suggesting the word completion "uTorrent"...after just "ut"!

philthy• 15 years ago

Luckily instant search is still in beta, has some quirks, and may never be fully implemented. I think Google knows this and is playing both sides of the fence. I don't use instant search because a) I am a competent and swift typist b) any heavy user knows instant search limits results. It's a toy.

jsz0• 15 years ago

Seems reasonable to me. Google is generating these autocomplete suggestions so they are ultimately responsible for them. I think there's quite a big difference between pushing search suggestions at people versus delivering the results of a precise query. It's a bit too soon to start crying censorship. That being said it would not surprise me at all if they end up eliminating the results entirely someday. Various courts around the world have cracked down on torrent/NZB sites, which are basically just search engines, if they can't get away with this it seems hard to believe Google can either.

trotsky• 15 years ago

Wow, 22 paragraphs about the removal of 5 keywords from instant and auto? Jesus, what will folks have to do - type out their entire search term and hit enter? Censorship?

I don't even think this is accurate. Granted, there is something off about how the terms stall out in instant, but for example as soon as I finish typing bittorrent both instant and auto complete kick back in and show as normal: http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6820/bittorrentac.png

In contrast, if you type out a sex term it quits instant and auto complete and never restarts them, you must hit enter: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7349/asexac.png (mostly safe for work - no results)

I imagine the real reason google is doing this is ad placement. After all instant is just about having the ads up longer. Google "bittorrent" and a standard search term like "real estate" - notice any differences? Yup, they don't sell ads on the bittorrent serp (just like they wont sell adsense on a torrent tracker)

Sephr3• 15 years ago

> I don't even think this is accurate. Granted, there is something off about how the terms stall out in instant

There's no stalling, it's completely disabled and will not suggest anything until you type the entire word.

> In contrast, if you type out a sex term it quits instant and auto complete and never restarts them

So? How does that have anything to do with justifing blocking BitTorrent terms? If I type "install bitt[orrent]" or "install ut[orrent]", I get no suggestions as it is clearly blocked.

citricsquid2• 15 years ago

I would guess people are searching "bittorrent [copyright material]" and someone has had their lawyers shout at google for it, because it could be seen as prompting users into pirating. Like "torrent li[nkin park]" might have got them in trouble because before the person was just searching "torrent li[nux]" so now a user who wants a legit torrent for linux is being told oh hey you can pirate linkin park albums too!

(I don't agree that this is right, but it seems the sensible explanation to me)

Semiapies2• 15 years ago

It's rather obviously not "completely disabled" if I can type "bittorrent" and then get auto-suggestions.

nikster• 15 years ago

Agree. I know Google is the new evil but all they've done is turned off autocomplete. If I type "[film name] torrent" in Google, I still get an instant, direct link to the piretebay download of said movie.

I think it actually makes sense to hide from autocomplete - because, after all, you don't want to entice people to go for the illegal stuff: If they want to find it, they can. But you don't want to suggest it first thing.

marshray9• 15 years ago

I am really disgusted with Google for this.

uTorrent is a great piece of software and completely legitimate application. I have used it to transfer open source and other content all the darn time. Peer-to-peer is a perfectly legitimate network application architecture and it's simply ridiculous that anyone should question it.

Those of you saying "this is effectively meaningless and not censorship" ... well why are they bothering to do it if it doesn't mean anything?

All of you l33t web startup founders had better realize that it may be your network architecture keyword search term that they come after next. After all, these people are fundamentally against the transfer of raw data, whatever its form.

boredguy8• 15 years ago

Oh how I wish this was intended as a joke.

sp332• 15 years ago

Google is putting the interests of other corporations over those of its users or investors. This is not a laughing matter.

guelo2• 15 years ago

Either state your counter-argument or stfu, this above the fray snark is insulting and useless.

tzs• 15 years ago

Torrentfreak should protest this by stopping showing Google ads on their site.

pharrington• 15 years ago

One person neglecting to call out of work does not make a boycott.

kang• 15 years ago

'Against a decision' and 'against a company' are different things.

dexen• 15 years ago

I take it that you mean Google has a grip too strong on internet economy: you can't stand against it too boldly or ditch its services altogether lest you risk losing revenue from AdWords... that right?

antidaily• 15 years ago

Searching for rapidshare or torrents on Google usually just leads you to garbage spam sites anyway.

DennisP• 15 years ago

I just typed "utor" into google, waited a bit, and "uTorrent" appeared in the dropdown just fine.

Roritharr• 15 years ago

doesnt work for me, until i enter that last t of utorrent nothing appears, sad.

Semiapies2• 15 years ago

Works fine for me.

mrschwabe• 15 years ago

Another reason to use DuckDuckGo. Slowly but surely Google is losing the patronage of nerds everywhere. Censorship like this will help to ensure an even more rapid abandonment.

Natsu• 15 years ago

I wonder if they're doing this to avoid having someone making a claim that they're inducing people to commit copyright infringement?

That's the only sense I can make out of this.

patio112• 15 years ago

If you typed "bingo card creator" into Google, two of the first ten suggestions were "bingo card creator torrent" and "bingo card creator serial". I have a screenshot on my blog somewhere... here we go.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/09/05/desktop-aps-versus-web-a...

Direct link: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/piracy-is-dying....

It is more than mildly annoying to have a modern day Clippy looking over one's users' brand searches and saying "It looks like you're looking for software... have you considered stealing it instead?"

uxp• 15 years ago

It appears to return similar results right now. I've always been frustrated when I would search for software, and the entire first page results, besides the actual first result, were rapidshare and megaupload aggregating blogs.

The query of the title of the Pragmatic Bookshelf book that happens to be open on my desk returns 4 relevant links. The remaining 6 are sites advertising free PDF downloads. Back in the day, one would have to go to a dedicated search engine for these links.

As much as I dislike "Censoring", Google should decide whether it wants to be in the business of providing links to sites that clearly are aggregators for filesharing and fileuploading links to pirated and copyrighted content. The Pirate Bay, et al., can take care of that.

rhizome2• 15 years ago

The business of providing links? They're hosting most of those blogs!

eftpotrm• 15 years ago

While I agree it's distasteful, a good percentage of Google's search users are surely looking for exactly that link to illegal copies though? By providing those links quickly and easily Google is arguably improving the quality of the search results for its end users.

Now, I'm with you that I'd rather that the search results were worse in this specific way, but this sort of thing is surely a direct result of algorithmically optimising search results to present the user with what they're after even if they don't necessarily know exactly how to find it, a general good and a defeating of the sort of SEO techniques we usually complain about here.

In general though - Google already has a 'SafeSearch' function for images, which seems to work tolerably well without complaint. Perhaps a similar system could be introduced both for results and suggestions so that these to illegal content and sites they consider likely to harm my computer could be filtered out by default and only returned if I specifically set the preference or search terms to look for them?

dalore• 15 years ago

You should try the Duck Duck Go challenge. I don't see torrents in my search results unless I choose !torrent of course.

jacquesm5• 15 years ago

Suggestion: make a few microsites with 'bingo card creator torrents' and such to crowd these guys off the front page, then have a nice blurb up on the page where you explain the downsides of not having an official copy and your stellar support.

That way you might mitigate some of the damage these jerks do to your bottom line.

patio112• 15 years ago

Not worth even the hour of my time it would take, or I would have done it four years ago. (Ironically, using minisites to get ten slots on a SERP is bad to Google's view of the world in a way that serialz are not.)

It is just the psychic nuisance factor: every time I see that box it's like "Come on guys, really?"

mwg664• 15 years ago

I consider this a valid challenge of making a profitable software business. You shouldn't need to rely on Google hiding results (or litigation) to sell more licenses. Your customers should want to buy it and if they don't - you have failed.

NickPollard• 15 years ago

Removing 'bingo card creater torrent' from suggestions given to people typing 'bingo card creater' seems fairly reasonable to me, for the reasons patio11 outlined.

What is weird is that they don't autocomplete 'bitto' to 'bittorrent'. I mean, at that point they already know what they're searching for, why not continue to expedite them?

donohoe• 15 years ago

I think the word "censorship" is being abused here.

mcasaje• 15 years ago

Perhaps Google, with its obviously inconsistent censorship policy, is trying to rile up the users being affected as well as the companies of their services to finally take action again the entertainment industry's censorship. Perhaps Google is the Green Hornet here, posing to be the bad guy?

Then again, I think that I'm just wishfully thinking, not wanting to accept the fact that Google has finally lost its independent mindset and vision of connecting the internets.

The last sentence on the blog sums it up best.

"Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide."

I wonder how Google can justify those contradicting actions.

vacri• 15 years ago

Given that I don't particularly like "instant" and that these results still appear on the full search, I would consider this a feature, not a fault...

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

And yet, they still have this:

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&safe=off&client=g...

imkevingao• 15 years ago

I think this is very hypocritical of Google.

Just a few months ago they pulled out of China because of censorship, and now they're censoring stuff themselves. Sure it's not Exactly the same, but everything starts with a small precedent. Now that Google is powerful, it first starts off with censoring torrents, then what next? If Google starts to censor and control the outflow of data, it just kills the current perception I have for Google.

This is nothing innovative.

GrandMasterBirt• 15 years ago

Sorry guys, I am having trouble believing this...

typing in "bittorrent" will yield bittorrent.com and 4th result as utorrent. Nothing is filtered.

michael_dorfman• 15 years ago

Re-read the article. It's not claiming that anything is filtered.

The author of the article is up in arms because Google has removed "bittorrent" and other terms from auto-complete. In other words, if you type "bittorr" in the search box and pause, it will not suggest "bittorrent" as a completion.

Here's a teacup. Good luck finding the tempest.

stretchwithme• 15 years ago

I don't think choosing what you're going to republish is censorship.

yemkay• 15 years ago

This is evil. They should rather tweak their algorithm instead of blacklisting phrases?

jacquesm5• 15 years ago

Nonsense. They are perfectly within their rights to not suggest that people behave in ways that are against the law.

You may not like that it is against the law in many places but (1) legally aggressive companies don't like other companies suggesting their stuff gets pirated and google is a much juicier target than John Doe, (2) it would not help google if Jane Doe brought up google suggesting she download a torrent when she was doing a search to buy the album if Justin Bieber and pirated it instead.

This is just a sound business decision by google, not evil.

mwg664• 15 years ago

I don't agree. A simple keyword match does not determine if a keyword result is suggesting that I break the law in any given region. "Ubuntu torrent" being a prime example of this.

jacquesm5• 15 years ago

It's not censorship, it's just a feature that they decide not to apply to one branch of queries because 'suggesting' such a search might get them in hot water with entities with very deep pockets.

bugsy• 15 years ago

I read the article and it is not censoring. It's just not including these sites in the instant results. They do turn up in the search results though. It's like the library putting the Playboys behind the counter and you have to ask for them.

mwg664• 15 years ago

2010 - the year the free Internet died.

aj700• 15 years ago

“There’s no reason for Google to throttle search results for our trademarks, including BitTorrent, µTorrent and torrent. Indeed, they do still enable autocomplete for many third-party clients that use the BitTorrent protocol, including BitComet, BitLord, and even sites like The Pirate Bay and Isohunt.”

so you'll be more successful in terms of search traffic if your client doesn't contain the word torrent!

Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

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