Page 44 - AVN April 2013

Business Sense_04.13 3/19/13 2:40 PM Page 44
STOP, THIEF | By Nate Glass
The Google Problem Pirate sites still rule in the search giant’s listings
Google is far and away the biggest spender of lob-
bying money in the tech sector, with 2012 figures
estimated at around $17 million to $18 million,
twice what they spent in 2011, and in some fiscal
quarters the Google lobbying total was more than the
next three companies combined. And much of that
lobbying money has gone toward matters like the
Stop Online Piracy Act and the Anti-Counterfeiting
Trading Agreement, both of which have intellectual
property implications.
But at the end of the day, I assume most content
Takedown Piracy is an anti-piracy service started in
2009 by Nate Glass, a 13-year veteran of the adult
industry. TDP offers copyright holders an affordable
and effective means to fight back against content
thieves. To date TDP has removed over 1.6 million con-
tent infringements, and it closely monitors 200 piracy
websites. For details, visit TakedownPiracy.com.
producers don’t care about the ins and outs of lobby-
Much has been said in the media recently about Google’s role as a facilitator of
piracy. A recent report by Professor Jonathan Taplin of the USC Annenberg
Innovation Lab listed Google as one of the Top 10 advertising networks supply-
ing, but the grim reality of losing valuable search
engine placement to shady overseas thieves. In the
example movie I mentioned before, a Google search
of the title goes a long way in showing just how bad
the problem is.
Google has a policy of showing how many results
have been removed from each search page because of
copyright infringement. For this particular movie,
ing ad revenue to piracy sites. To compile his report, Taplin used Google’s own
Transparency Report to show the most egregious piracy sites are using major
Google has been forced to remove 42 URLs from just
the first page of results. That’s 42 piracy results that
Last month one of
our clients released a
titl e they had hoped
would be a big sell er.
But bef or e the titl e
was even released,
it was already being
kill ed by pirate
listings.
”
ases
LEGAL NEWS
advertising networks like Yahoo and Google to finance their enterprise-level
copyright infringement.
But the Google problem goes much deeper than just how the search engine
giant lines the pockets of exploitative piracy sites. Google seems content to turn
a blind eye toward the actions of the same sites it acknowledges as repeat
infringers.
Last month one of our clients released a title they had hoped would be a big
seller. But before the title was even released, it was already being killed by pirate
listings. This is because piracy sites scam Google by indexing every search ever
run on their site and treating it as a unique content page, full of advertisements
of course, and fake links to download materials. So these days it is quite com-
mon for pirate sites to outrank the legitimate sites before the movie is even
available. But once the movie is released, the problem becomes increasingly
worse.
While Google’s Transparency Report lists sites like ThePirateBay.se,
Filestube.com, ExtraTorrent.com, and Kat.ph as some of the most notorious
infringers, those sites continue to dominate the top results for movie titles.
Despite Google’s promise to downrank pirate listings, there has seemingly been
no penalty put in place for those sites. All of these sites have had more than 1
million infringements lodged against them with Google, yet Google seems to
be unsure if a million or so complaints are worthy of a downranking.
It is completely reasonable to think if Google wanted to do the “right thing”
they would downrank the sites that are constant targets of infringement reports.
But Google seems absolutely determined to not only not downrank pirate sites,
but in doing so, they continue to help those sites rake in the ad dollars.
And make no mistake about it; there are ad dollars aplenty. Piracy today isn’t
about content as much as it’s about showing advertisements and the subsequent
advertising dollars they bring in. And you can sell a helluva lot of ads showing
content you don’t have any cost in producing. Recent reports show that 96 per-
cent of the $37.9 billion Google made in 2011 came from advertising. It’s then
no wonder people like Google fight so hard against anti-piracy measures con-
taining requirements for ad networks to cut off pirates, like the one in the
much-maligned (and Google-opposed) SOPA bill. And when you make $38
billion dollars a year, you can certainly afford to not only oppose anti-piracy
legislation, but you can set up a really elaborate lobbying arm to get Congress
to bend to your will.
would have been in the top 10, squeezing out almost
every legitimate retailer or video-on-demand service.
At one point all ten results on the first page of
Google were pirate listings.
From the Top 100 results, we have had to report
187 URLs for removal. And nearly all of those were
from sites that are well-known piracy sites that rank
high in Google’s own Transparency Report. And keep
in mind, we’re not talking about results where people
are clearly looking for free downloads of pirated
movies, i.e. “movie title + torrent” or “movie title +
free.” These are just results for the name of the title—
period. Those searching for legitimate outlets to view
these movies have to sort through site after site offer-
ing pirated versions.
Google, to a large degree, controls the copyright
infringement faucet, and they aren’t likely to shut it
off anytime soon. It’s reasonable to assume they fear
that downranking or removing pirate sites from their
listings would drive traffic to competitors like Bing or
Yahoo, which would mean a drop in the money those
pirate sites bring in to Google via ad dollars. Of
course Bing and Yahoo would then become the target
of copyright holders, but the traffic lost by Google
might be irreplaceable.
In the meantime, Google’s declarations of working
to help legitimate artists and content producers have
to be taken as empty unfulfilled promises. Until
Google gets real about cleaning up its search results,
content producers would be wise to stay vigilant and
continue to apply pressure on search engines and
advertisers to stop putting money into the pockets of
the content thieves who have created empires from
the exploitation of other people’s hard work.
||
44 | AVN.com | 4.13