
Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/google-now-censors-the-pirate-bay-isohunt-4shared-and-more-111123/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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JonnieCache
I said this before last time around on this non-issue:

Google are not preventing people reaching tpb results.

They are declining to actively push these results unbidden upon people.

The massive, fundamental difference between these two things should be
obvious.

Do we really think it's unreasonable for google to decline to actively point
it's users towards largely illegal material which they had not explicitly
requested?

Google is a publicly traded, for-profit corporation. They have every right to
do whatever the hell they want, within law, to make their business as
successful as possible. If you don't like it, go use DuckDuckGo, or start your
own engine. There's a public domain page index available now, have at it.

~~~
paganel
> They have every right to do whatever the hell they want, within law, to make
> their business as successful as possible. If you don't like it, go use
> DuckDuckGo, or start your own engine. There's a public domain page index
> available now, have at it.

Google has built its business on other people's content, is that simple. But
then it started to gradually "steal" more and more of said people work, until
it became the giant corporation that you mention.

And before people start down-voting me, just imagine a giant like IBM (let's
say) building a search engine that steals other people's content (because
that's what things like Google Places have become) and then making tons of
money on the back of it. Hell will break loose.

~~~
JonnieCache
I agree that Places and other similar parts of google's business are highly
ethically suspect, far more so than the user profiling and data retention that
are more often talked about.

I don't understand how it's related to this particular issue though.

~~~
paganel
> I don't understand how it's related to this particular issue though.

Because when it first started I think there was a mutual, non-spoken agreement
between web content-owners and Google, sort of "I give you our content for
free to use it on your search engine and you bring me back visitors by trying
to be impartial in your SERPs; but I don't expect you to compete against me,
not now, not ever".

That didn't last long, to say the least, but said content owners are now
prisoners of Google (yes, it's a big word, but that's the fact). If my
personal experience counts, I let Googlebot crawl my website like crazy, at
speed rates for which I would certainly ban any other potential search engine
bots, and that's because Google brings in 98% of my search engine traffic. And
I'm sure I'm not the only one banning strange-looking bots, which could belong
to potential new, wonderful search engines, but which at this rate will never
see the light of day.

And, unfortunately, things like DuckDuckGo are sub-optimal outside of the
English sphere of influence, at least that's what I could see in my case.

~~~
1010101111001
If you want to build a search engine, there's no need to crawl the web. Just
crawl Google. That's what Microsoft did.

The inequities of crawling are in my opinion a huge issue with the web that
receives relatively little discussion.

If a majority of websites were to ban Googlebot, Google would be brought to
its knees. Slowly.

Their index would go stale.

I like Google. But I do think crawling, who gets to do it and who does not is
an underappreciated issue. Google is very lucky.

~~~
billpatrianakos
How are we blocking Googlebot? If we're using robots.txt then they can simply
ignore it. Googlebot can begin to identify itself differently. There are a
million ways to get around a Googlebot ban and I wouldn't be the guy who
thinks he's smarter than Google. You'll lose that one. They'll find a way.

But anyway, this isnt really relevant. Can you tie it in for us?

~~~
1010101111001
Blocking is not done via robots.txt. It would more likely be IP-based.

Impossible to block Google? Probably true. But only because they have been
allowed to grow so large as to be indefeasible. And the reason they've been
able to do that is because of what the commenter said: websites allowed them
to crawl, fast and hard, year after year. This is not true for all bots.

I'm not sure how this is relevant to the article and the specific issue. I
don't disgree with what Google is doing in this case. And I understand why and
where Google is headed.

The issue of who is allowed to crawl and who is not is something the commenter
raised. It's a huge issue that people take for granted, in my opinion.

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wmf
This doesn't really explain the back story. Google's _autocomplete_ used to
suggest searching for torrents (e.g. type "the dark knight" and it would
autocomplete to "the dark knight torrent" because so many people have searched
for that). While this was certainly a boon to certain sites, Google has no
obligation to provide it (considering that autocomplete didn't even exist for
many years). Google's new policy for pirated stuff is the same as for porn: if
you're explicitly looking for it they will find it for you, but they won't
suggest it. This particular article is just complaining about some new fine-
tuning of the same policy.

~~~
ernesto99
This is true, but by Google's filter is not as smart as you would expect and
the filter is too broad.

Why include the word "BitTorrent" as it's the trademark of a fine US tech
company?

Why include ALL variations of searches with the dictionary word "torrent"?

These decisions appear to be quite arbitrary, which is dangerous when we're
talking about censorship.

~~~
billpatrianakos
I'm sure the "bit" in "BitTorrwnt" is used because people don't know the
difference as use the brand name as if it were the same as the technology. Do
like Rollerblades? I much prefer inline skates. See what I'm saying?

The real solution would be to solve the piracy problem and have the BitTorrent
protocol go back to being widely used for its intended purpose. It wasnr
intended as a piracy tool, it was intended to be an efficient, decentralized
file sharing tool like p2p networks. If those protocols were being used to
share the newest office memo in the company network or just non piracy related
files in general then there'd be no need to the restriction and it's
unintended consequences and we could revert the autocomplete policy.

It's the rule breakers that made it this way and that's where your frustration
should be directed. But I'll admit that's pretty hard these days. I'm only 25
and I'm the exception but the rest of my generation and younger seem to think
piracy is fine and have this sense of entitlement about it. That needs to
stop.

It's pretty clear this isn't arbitrary just like the Rollerblade example I
gave before. Typical users often think you have to type in a URL into the
search engine. They never use the address bar! They get from site to site
using a 3 step process. 1) Go to search engine of choice. 2 Type in desired
URL 3) Click the first result. Those people are the reason the filter is so
broad, but in the end it's the pirates who created the need for a filter to
begin with.

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mMark
I see no problem with this.

It's not "censorship" as TorrentFreak wants to linkbait. All results are still
indexed, even sites that are obviously piracy related.

All Google is trying to do is cover their asses when it comes to contributory
infringement.

If they were ever sued search engines are USUALLY safe. The exception being
when sites actively push users towards pirated content - as we've seen through
cases such as the isoHunt case where having a "Top Torrents" list that had
mainly studio IP condemned them to heavy losses.

I think the last thing anyone wants is Google to lose a copyright infringement
case. The precedent would be the gold standard against search engines and
would be enough to start knocking out indexers and torrent sites all over the
place.

If they see cause to do a bold move such as this to protect themselves, I say
all the more to them.

------
ars
Extremely inaccurate title, torrentfreak should be ashamed.

The results are "censored" only from autocomplete, not from the index itself.

~~~
ernesto99
TorrentFreak here...

They do censor these words right?

The title is correct but we can't always include all nuances. We hope most of
our readers will take the time to at least read three sentences :)

I considered " Google Now Censors The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More
From Their Autocomplete and Instant Services Until A User Types In The
Complete Term" but that seemed a bit too much.

But yeah, I'm very ashamed.

~~~
ars
Suggested title:

"Google no longer autocompletes The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More".

Or.

"Google no longer suggests The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and More in search
bar".

~~~
benologist
"Title generates fewer outraged upvotes and pageviews".

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tzs
I'd certainly like to see less pirated stuff in search results that aren't
explicitly asking for it. Several times I've been trying to find reviews or
discussion of relatively obscure math books, and the top several pages of
search results have all been for pirated copies of the book.

The funny thing is most of those don't even actually work. The sights are
often just directories linking to the alleged downloads and the links are bad.

------
redthrowaway
Searching for "torrent" lists tpb as the first result for me, as does "tpb"
and "thepiratebay". Similarly, "isohunt" returns the expected site, and
isohunt.com ranks third for "iso". It doesn't seem to matter whether or not
I'm logged in.

~~~
ricree
The search results themselves are unchanged, but the instant suggestions are.
From a couple quick tests, this seems to be the case for me as well, though it
would be easier to be sure if I had results from a year or so ago to compare
against.

For example, "the pirate ba" returns "the pirate balthasar", "the pirate bar",
and "the pirate bar" in several different cities. Amusingly, "bittor" doesn't
complete to bittorrent, but does include at least one "piracy" related term.
It also has a torrent client as its top result.

Spelling suggestions don't seem effected for now. "bitorent" suggests
"bittorrent". "thepirtebay" shows results for "thepiratebay".

~~~
redthrowaway
Well I don't see what the issue is, then. They do the same thing for porn or
anything else that could be remotely offensive. I don't have a problem with
that. They aren't blacklisting torrent sites; they're just not suggesting
them.

~~~
kevingadd
BitTorrent is a trademark of a legal company that's trying to make money to
pay employees. Google is censoring their name because they've decided they're
involved in illegal activity, not because they _actually are_.

If Google decided to censor your business would you be happy about it?

~~~
redthrowaway
>If Google decided to censor your business would you be happy about it?

The millions of porn webmasters out there don't seem to be complaining too
loudly. They're just as legal.

------
dpkendal
I don't see the problem. They're only blocking the terms from suggestions and
requiring you to hit return to finish your search for these. As long as you
can still get the same results, I'm happy.

This post should probably be retitled to "Google no longer suggests or
instantly searches for..." or some variant.

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nextparadigms
I'm fine with this move, but I hope this is as far as they are about to go. I
really hope this isn't a precursor to much more aggressive censorship, like
removing those sites from the index or giving them a much lower priority in
the search results even when you're specifically looking for them.

I know Google is the easy target for RIAA/MPAA and their politician allies
lately, but Google really doesn't have to "give in" at all here. At least not
until a law like SOPA gets passed. But until the ink is dry on a passed law
like that, Google doesn't have to do any concessions.

The only reason I could see them doing this anyway is by trying to appease the
content industry when making content deals with them for their own services,
but for Google's sake, I hope they won't be going that road, because there
won't be any turning back. They will just ask for more and more censorship in
future deals. They just need to tell them that's absolutely off the table in
negotiations, and not even agree to start the negotiations before they
acknowledge that.

~~~
draggnar
or just stop using google - at least that would be an option if they took more
agressive steps at censorship, which I don't think they will, these seem
obvious.

The key is that it is not written into law.

------
OoTheNigerian
My people have a saying, "it is from clapping that dancing begins."

I specifically do not have a problem with this. However, each 'moral' step
Google makes takes it nearer to dancing and wanting to be the conscience of
the web. One day Google might go SOPA and decide to stop linking to sites that
America decides support terrorism.

I am afraid of when US embargos will mean country domains will stop being
indexed. It is dangerous the way Google is so powerful that they can determine
the success of other sites.

In the words of PG "I worry, I worry". Not for now, but the future.

------
gwern
<https://torrentfreak.com/googles-anti-piracy-filter-110712/> astonishes me.
The autocomplete stuff actually matters that much? I would not have guessed
it, which is just another reminder that I am a geek whose Internet usage
differs considerably from much of the population.

------
artursapek
Recently I noticed that Google Chrome has a custom search built in for what.cd
(a huge, exclusive music sharing website). When logged in, typing in the URL
"what.cd" and hitting space brings up "Search What.CD Artists:" Autocomplete
also continues to suggest "what.cd faq" as the first result for "what."

It makes sense though. What.CD is a tacit community, much less known about
than any of the more "mainstream" file-sharing networks mentioned in this
article. I wonder if Google is consciously just leaving it alone because
reckons it can afford to. This move is no doubt a PR move and a legal
precaution (understandably). It's just funny how they've been selective
against the public networks.

~~~
murz
Chrome adds sites that you visit to your list of search engines [1]. It's not
built in.. typing in what.cd and hitting space does nothing for me.

[1] [http://superuser.com/questions/276069/google-chrome-
automati...](http://superuser.com/questions/276069/google-chrome-
automatically-adding-websites-to-my-list-of-search-engines)

~~~
artursapek
Whoops, you're right. My bad

------
richardw
Possibly related:

I sell a shareware app. Google has been helpfully suggesting the suffixes
'crack' and 'keygen' for years. Today it isn't - wonder if it's related to the
original topic or if it's just a blip.

------
VonLipwig
The title is misleading. Google still indexes these sites and they still
appear in the sites search results.

All Google is doing is saying they don't want sites like this to be found
quicker or stumbled upon using search helpers like auto-complete. If they want
to make it so you need to explicitly hunt down sites which make copyrighted
material easily accessible to be download then what is the problem?

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prophetjohn
I don't find this to be particularly surprising or outrageous. If someone
types in "thep", what are they supposed to suggest "thepiratebay.com -
download free..."? I think it's a little misleading to say that Google is
censoring anything. They're just modifying the Instant algorithm so that
they're not suggesting infringing content to their users.

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yanw
I don't agree with the terminology, it's not "censorship", the sites in
question are still indexed the keywords don't get autocompleted is all.

~~~
billpatrianakos
These people are abusing the terminology. They know they are supporting
piracy. They know it's illegal. Theyre counting on ignorance, exaggeration,
and this new Sense of entitlement to free music, movies, and software that's
infected the younger generation (at least in the US, and I'm only 25 but it
applies to my peers too). They're using these great ideals like freedom as
shields and in the end they're going to hurt all of us because of it. They
want to act innocent as if they're being persecuted unjustly. It makes me so
mad that the freedom of the web might be restricted and it's these same people
who say they love freedom so much who gave law makers the excuse to be able to
do it!

------
drivebyacct2
I wonder if some of the reaction to this is with a consideration in mind, of
Google's search being essential for finding things... and the threat of
censorship from them affecting discoverability and cohesiveness that Google
enables.

------
jellicle
Yeah, if you just start typing "isohunt " and watch the Instant suggestions,
you can see what they mean. Try typing "youtube " or "yahoo " and Google knows
just what you mean, right away. Isohunt? Not so much. Typing "torren" gives me
suggestions for the Torrens system, apparently a system of land titles in
Australia. Who knew? But I'm guessing the number of people who complete that
word with a "t" rather than a "s" is in the ratio of tens of thousands to 1.
Unless the Torrens system is a lot more popular than I think it is.

Oh, Google. Do we have to fight about every little thing?

Here's what's best for users and arguably, best for Google in the long run:

"Google search tries to find what the user wants to find"

Here's what best for Google in the short run:

"Google search tries to find what is most profitable for Google, Inc."

I'm pretty sure you want to do the first one, not the second one, to maximize
the long-term advantage to your company. Companies that intentionally make
their product shittier do not actually do well in the long run. None of them.
And frankly, trying to "compromise" with the RIAA/MPAA/etc. is foolish.
They're paid to push toward a position which is untenable for Google. No
matter how much you compromise, they'll be back next year with a further
demand. In the end the RIAA/MPAA do not want to co-exist with you; they want
the internet to consist of two buttons, one labeled "Buy Music" and one
labeled "Buy Movies". So in the end you can't satisfy them. Why try? Nobody at
the MPAA will thank you for this.

~~~
1010011010
Google gets sued by organizations all the time. They don't censor the results
-- except when commanded to by law enforcement. They can't "compromise" with
the police. And note that this filtering applies only to suggestions, not to
actual results.

Google wants to make the internet free. Organizations like the RIAA/MPAA/BSA
want it to be their own private AOL.

