
Google's Opaque New Policy Lets Rightsholders Dictate Search Results - mjfern
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/googles-opaque-new-policy-lets-rightsholders-dictate-search-results
======
jmillikin
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.

~~~
dangrossman
> 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
"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.

------
azakai
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).

~~~
jmillikin
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.

~~~
azakai
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.

~~~
maxerickson
Google's announcement of the change has clear language stating that they are
using the takedown notices that Google receives for the scoring:

[http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-
se...](http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-
algorithms.html)

~~~
azakai
And according to that language, YouTube should be demoted quite a lot - we
know it receives tons of takedown notices. Just search for any copyrighted
video in history, it's on YouTube.

~~~
magicalist
You keep repeating the same point, which is confusing. How is this any
different than Google is treating vimeo? Google is not looking at the number
of takedown requests companies file with vimeo (they can't, in fact, takedown
notices are AFAIK only public record if they proceed to a court case
(companies that publish to chillingeffects do so voluntarily)), so they're
only using the number of takedown requests they receive to remove search
results linking to videos on vimeo. That's the same as youtube.

[https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/youtube.com/)

[https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/vimeo.com/)

Based on those numbers, neither are likely to be impacted by this, but you
appear to want google to actually treat youtube differently (using "don't host
this" instead of "don't return a link for this" as a signal).

~~~
azakai
YouTube has 5x more requests there than Vimeo. So it seems like it should be
demoted 5x more?

Possibly the answer is 0, so 5x more is still 0. And that would be ok.

But if the answer is anything other than 0, and YouTube is not demoted more
than Vimeo, then that is different treatment.

Of course the problem is that we don't see what goes into search results, so
we won't see these demotions. If we see Vimeo ranked lower than YouTube, it
could be for other reasons. And given the extremely strong position of
google.com, this is exactly the issue.

~~~
jmillikin
According to the links, YouTube receives two complaints per week, compared to
one per week for Vimeo. The total number of complaints is 251 and 56,
respectively.

Compare that to the top of the list, filestube.com, which receives almost 700
complaints per week and has a total of over sixty thousand complaints.

I would hope that this update would not affect either YouTube or Vimeo, or any
other domain with such a vanishingly small number of complaints.

~~~
azakai
It does seem then that it will not currently target YouTube or Vimeo, good
point.

However, what if in a year copyright holders decide that sending takedowns
directly to google.com is better for some reason? (Due for example to some
technical legal matter.) Do you honestly think that if that happened, Google
would demote YouTube?

That's the conflict of interest, and it's the first big issue here.

The second big issue is that there _are_ lots of takedowns for YouTube. They
just go to YouTube currently and not to Google directly. But if the
_principle_ of the matter were valid - if a site that had a lot of actual
takedown notices, i.e., evidence that infringing content goes up on them, were
a site worthy of demotion - then in principle, it should not matter where the
takedowns go. It is their existence that matters. But they are being ignored
for the biggest content uploading site on the web, YouTube, owned by Google -
making the demotion of _any_ site that ends up demoted by this new policy
highly ironic.

------
bediger4000
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.

------
3amOpsGuy
"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.

~~~
taligent
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
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.

------
notatoad
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
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...](http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/99356/files/SilversteinHMM99.pdf)
(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.

------
SeanDav
DuckDuckGo must be loving this change.

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

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

~~~
magicalist
well, we have no idea what bing does with them. As far as I know, bing doesn't
even publish the requests they get to chillingeffects or any where else, let
alone publish what they do with them.

Also, for the GP: bing is _not_ the sole backend source for DDG.

------
lomegor
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.

~~~
taligent
Pretty simple to see why.

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

------
Zenst
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.

------
neurotech1
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.

------
rohit89
I submitted a post about this a few hours back.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4370224>

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

Fuck titles, man.

