Google's Opaque New Policy Lets Rightsholders Dictate Search Results

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/googles-opaque-new-policy-lets-rightsholders-dictate-search-results

by mjfern • 14 years ago

95 49 14 years ago

eff.org

bediger4000• 14 years ago

What is this new class of nobility entitled "Rightsholders"?

They must have something special, as they get to dictate how things work legally, and extra-legally.

lomegor• 14 years ago

What I don't get about this change is why. I maybe OK if they did these change saying that users want to find content from webpages with mostly legal content, or that content from those website almost always have better quality. But this is not the case here.

The only thing I can argue here is that they may be doing it to receive fewer takedown requests in Google Search. But I'm not defending them, as that probably isn't the case.

taligent2• 14 years ago

Pretty simple to see why.

Google needs a cosy relationship with MPAA/RIAA so they can sell content through the YouTube and Play Stores.

rohit89• 14 years ago

I submitted a post about this a few hours back. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4370224

Zenst• 14 years ago

Sounds a bit like patent trolls for search results in many ways.

Also if I want to buy some fruit and search for Apple, well can see how that works. The internet is open to all and more people eat apples than will ever own a iApple device. Not best example given it uses apples, but is easy to use as an example when you compare searching for apple over a pear. With that you can see how rightsholders factored into search results can play out. Currently search's bias to towards a geek bias and thats fine for us geek. Though it does put of non geeks who might want to buy and apple and not have the search engine kung-fu to see past the rightsholder layers they will encounter and as such shape there mindset. Think I'll like this to milking sheep and whilst this wont effect me or you, it will effect many and they wont even know it, bah.

SeanDav• 14 years ago

DuckDuckGo must be loving this change.

Google definitely seems to be on the path of "Big Brother" and I don't like it.

jmillikin6• 14 years ago

DuckDuckGo uses Bing for its search backend, so it's had this behavior for a while now. To find a general-purpose search engine that doesn't comply with the DMCA, you'll have to use Yandex, Baidu, or other foreign-hosted services.

sp332• 14 years ago

This change only "demotes" search results, it doesn't remove them. So I don't think DDG would be affected much?

azakai9• 14 years ago

This is particularly ironic since it is Google - owner of YouTube. YouTube is by far the site with the largest amount of infringing content, and the largest amount of takedown requests.

But somehow I doubt YouTube will be "demoted" as apparently other sites will be. In fact YouTube has a special position in the top bar of Google products, even better than a search result. Does anyone think Google will be removing it from there? If not, it's clearly unfair to demote any other site that competes with YouTube (or doesn't, for that matter - what's fair should be fair).

mtgx• 14 years ago

I'm usually a fan of Google, but I would love for them to get into real anti-trust trouble over not demoting Youtube, too, and getting forced to demote it because of the stupid decision they took themselves about downgrading sites based on DMCA notices. It would be something very satisfying about seeing this backfire against them.

icebraining• 14 years ago

It depends on what takedowns they mean - if it's those to the site itself or those targeted at Google Search. I don't see how could they detect the former in other sites, and Youtube probably doesn't get much of the latter.

azakai9• 14 years ago

But the point is, there is no meaningful difference between the two.

Takedown notices sent to google.com about YouTube versus ones sent directly to YouTube using YouTube's existing mechanism are both takedown notices. If one demotes you, so should the other. But Google has a clear conflict of interest here.

jmillikin6• 14 years ago

Which video-hosting services do you think will be demoted? Every major one (YouTube, Vimeo, LiveLeak, etc) comply with the DMCA, so they're unlikely to have links removed from Google's search results.

azakai9• 14 years ago

According to the article,

> sites that have a “high number of removal notices” of takedown notices that result in actual takedowns will show up lower in some search results,

That means that complying with the takedown notices is exactly what gets you demoted. Which means that this is directly relevant to YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

The logic seems to be, if you have a lot of valid takedown notices sent to you, you must have a lot of infringing content. Which is true. And YouTube does have tons of infringing content, people upload copyrighted music all the time.

benologist• 14 years ago

The sites that host all the content found on sites like tvlinks.co.uk, surfthechannel.com - those have been shut down but they were link directories of movies and tv shows making bank on ad impressions and referral fees funneling traffic to the videos hosted on other sites.

One of the arguments against Mega was they affiliated with these sites and knowingly paid these indexing sites lots of money for referring new customers who paid to watch or download pirated content on MegaVideo and MegaUpload.

They all pay lip service to the DMCA but their entire business model is to hold content just long enough to entice people to pay to access it or the next upload of it.

Really though I think the link sites are going to be the real losers in this action rather than the actual video sites, if you go to google and search for 'watch <any tv show or movie>' you'll see a lot of intermediary link sites competing for that traffic.

dangrossman3• 14 years ago

Why would YouTube be the largest target of takedown requests?

1) YouTube acts on DMCA notices, so there's no need to separately file notices against their search results

2) YouTube has given every major content provider access to internal systems to flag content and have it disabled immediately without human intervention

3) A proper DMCA notice creates some liability (penalty of perjury and all), where pressing a button in YouTube's content flagging system creates none, so the internal system is both practically and legally preferable to sending DMCA notices

azakai9• 14 years ago

> Why would YouTube be the largest target of takedown requests?

> 1) YouTube acts on DMCA notices

Exactly - YouTube receives a ton of takedown notices, and acts on them. Those are grounds for demotion in search results now according to the new policy.

duaneb2• 14 years ago

It's hard to tell exactly how it will affect YouTube, especially since we don't know how it affects results at all. I suspect the deciding factor will be how google knows about the takedown requests, since it will almost certainly treat YouTube specially. Furthermore, it's possible that YouTube is linked so much that the DMCA requests have a negligible effect.

Personally, I think this is a mistake by Google. No reason I can think of makes sense - this won't appease content holders for long.

azakai9• 14 years ago

> It's hard to tell exactly how it will affect YouTube, especially since we don't know how it affects results at all. I suspect the deciding factor will be how google knows about the takedown requests, since it will almost certainly treat YouTube specially.

And that is what is wrong here. Google is treating websites it owns in a special way, promoting them in google.com results unfairly compared to the competition.

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

http://searchengineland.com/how-youtube-will-escape-googles-...

jmillikin6• 14 years ago

That article is misleading, I believe intentionally so.

  > But that Perez Hilton video listing would get removed
  > via the web search takedown system, as there is no
  > Google Video removal. The YouTube one, as I’ve
  > explained, would fall under the YouTube removal system.

The video he mentions is hosted on perezhilton.com, which has instructions at http://perezhilton.com/copyright-statement for requesting a copyright takedown. There is no reason to request its removal from Google unless perezhilton.com refused to comply with the request, which seems unlikely.

Further down the page, he includes a quote from Google which directly refutes the thesis of his article, but then says it must be a straight-up lie because it doesn't agree with his misconceptions about how the internet works.

jmillikin6• 14 years ago

I don't understand the arguments of either side in this debate.

The RIAA/MPAA claim that demoting copyright-infringing search results in Google will reduce piracy. This assumes that there's some large group of people using Google (or Bing, or Blekko, etc) to find pirated media. I don't see how that is plausible, given that the actual search results for pirated media are almost entirely scams and malware.

The EFF is concerned that demoting sites which generate many DMCA notices will muffle free speech. A hypothetical situation is:

1. A site hosts user-uploaded video, and refuses to comply with takedown notices.

2. User Alice uploads an expose of government misconduct, and user Bob uploads a few hundred pirated movies.

3. Google receives DMCA notices to remove links to the pirated movies from their index.

4. Alice's expose is now ranked lower in search results.

While this situation is theoretically possible, it seems unlikely. All of the major hosting sites I know of (for video, audio, text, blobs) respond to DMCA notices themselves, and therefore aren't targets for search-engine takedowns.

(conflict of interest disclaimer: I work for Google, though not on this project)

  > Takedown requests are nothing more than accusations of
  > copyright infringement. No court or other umpire confirms
  > that the accusations are valid (although copyright owners
  > can be liable for bad-faith accusations).

Isn't this incorrect? Under the DMCA, recipients of a takedown notice can file a counter-notice stating that the material is not infringing. From there, further actions involve the court system.

tomrod• 14 years ago

> This assumes that there's some large group of people using Google (or Bing, or Blekko, etc) to find pirated media.

Ahem: "intitle:"index.of"(mpg(avi)wmv) (words you're looking for) -html -htm -php -asp -jsp

Would this be affected by the new policy? I don't know. I was shown this by a modern young-un--didn't know it myself.

zht• 14 years ago

there are now plenty of sites that are aware of this and will have bogus directory listing pages

dangrossman3• 14 years ago

> This assumes that there's some large group of people using Google (or Bing, or Blekko, etc) to find pirated media

There are. Tens to hundreds of millions of them, probably.

E.g. "Watch Game of Thrones" vs "learn to dance":

http://i.imgur.com/JNyGy.png

Google suggests I check these popular searches too:

* watch game of thrones megavideo

* watch game of thrones episode 1

* watch game of thrones tvduck

* watch game of thrones tv links

* watch game of thrones episode 2

* watch game of thrones episode 3

* watch game of thrones episode 8

* watch game of thrones season 2 episode 1 online free

I don't think they were looking for the link to subscribe to HBO.

nivla• 14 years ago

"Watch XYZ" does not mean anything since a studio can legally stream their own content. For example: Google "Watch Southpark" and the first result will be from southparkstudios.com. People simply want to watch a certain show online and it doesn't matter to them if its legal or illegal as long as they get to watch it.

_delirium• 14 years ago

Is the caveat in #1 actually required? As I understand it, there's nothing in the DMCA requiring that a copyright holder file a takedown notice with the site before they file one with Google, since those are independent. They could file one with Google for the search results first, or they could file the notices simultaneously. That would result in sites being demoted even if they do comply with takedown notices, because under Google's new policy they'd be demoted just by the fact of Google having received DMCA notices.

maxerickson2• 14 years ago

Presumably they will mostly only get demoted if they host a large amount of content that is subject to DMCA notices.

jrockway• 14 years ago

The counter-notice process is somewhat dangerous, and is not something to be undertaken without a budget for legal representation. From what I've read on Wikipedia, there are basically two options for the original takedown sender: ignore the counter-notice for 10 days (at which case the disputed content can be put back up), or file a lawsuit against the infringer in federal court.

Admittedly, Wikipedia's article on the subject is relatively poor, so I could be wrong. But filing a counter-notice seems a lot like going out in your backyard and whacking that wasp nest with your baseball bat. Maybe it will all work out, but probably not.

Here is a classic example of how the DMCA takedown process works in real life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_signing_key_c...

3amOpsGuy• 14 years ago

"Dictate". I understand policy holders can now influence but not dictate results.

Am i being unreasonable in thinking this use of inflationary language is wrong?

If morally you're on the right side of the argument, which i believe the EFF is, then you must play everything completely straight and by the book - otherwise you just give up your advantage.

What language do we reserve for the really bad things.

taligent2• 14 years ago

Of course policy holders can dictate results.

They can choose to whom they send DMCA notices so all other ranking factors being equal they will have the ability to decide which results go higher than others.

And this IS a really bad thing as it the equivalent to online censorship.

curiouscats• 14 years ago

It does seem to be a bad idea to me. If you had to implement it I would institute a very harsh signal for takedown requests that are proven false.

Get 3 false claims in YouTube's internal process (being unreliable I believe is most useful as a state of the systems used by a source, I would use the data I have on false claims from "rights holders" as a way to judge if they are reliable) in a quarter and no influence is given to your claims of knowing what is infringing and just being an abuser of the "rights" system. Most of the big media seem like they would get bounced by this as they seem to flag all sorts of stuff improperly.

Again, I would just not do this at all. But if I was told to do it, then I would want to have very strict measures to avoid using "advice" (claims by big content of infringement) from extremely unreliable sources.

A benefit of setting up a system that punished false claims is to make those currently spewing out false claims find ways to be accurate. Currently there seems to be no reason not to just claim tons of stuff that you have no right to claim (and it seems there are even incentives in the system to do so - YouTube starts sharing revenue with you on the video you claim). And if they didn't become more accurate then at least not mess up search results by treating the poor signals they provide as trustworthy.

neurotech1• 14 years ago

Google could make this more transparent, and put a note on the search results, "3 sites in these results are down-rated due to excessive DMCA notices received"

The thing is that most reasonably web-savvy people will bypass Google and use a torrent search site or "free-episodes-blah-blah.com" site to find what they want.

If the MPAA/RIAA were not dinosaurs lobbyists running a massive fraud campaign, they should look at how sidereel.com is organized. Featured (legal and sometimes non-free) content shows up first, and then the other sites show up second.

domwood• 14 years ago

I'm literally here to bitch about how fucking inflammatory this title is.

Fuck titles, man.

notatoad• 14 years ago

Everybody seems to be looking at this a little too negatively. 'Demoting' is ultimately a meaningless thing - google does not specify how much the algorithm is going to penalize these sites, just that they will. And they aren't going to make anything disappear from the internet, TPB will still be there and you can still search for content from the TPB homepage. Is it really a big deal if a google search for game of thrones returns the HBO site before a torrent site?

This move is going to give google some serious brownie points with the content providers though, which is a good thing for all of us because it means that good content might become more accessible legally.

incongruity• 14 years ago

The problem with this is that it doesn't take much to tip the scales. As this: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/99356/files/SilversteinHMM... (admittedly old, but foundational) study shows, most web searchers stop after the first 10 results.

If a result is (wrongly) pushed off the first page, much less down to the 3rd or 4th, it may as well not be there for almost all users. That, combined with Google's dominant position in search means that pages may well effectively be erased from the internet as far as many users are concerned.

Google's Opaque New Policy Lets Rightsholders Dictate Search Results

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