

 Court May Order Google to Censor ‘Torrent,’ ‘RapidShare’ and ‘Megaupload’ - lightspot
http://torrentfreak.com/court-may-order-google-to-censor-torrent-rapidshare-and-megaupload-120718/

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naner
_...from its Instant and Autocomplete services._

Still bad but not quite so bad. Actually, I'm a little worried about filtering
Instant since that's effectively filtering all of search for many people.

And why bother with filtering Megaupload? It is dead.

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tomku
When something is "censored" from Instant, it just says "Press enter to
search" rather than loading it automatically. Nobody who bothered to put
"torrent" in the search box is going to be dissuaded by having to press one
extra key to see the results.

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naner
Thank you for clarifying, I just assumed search results would be missing.
Which now that I think about it doesn't make much sense.

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grecy
I wonder if I had a business that sold legal torrents, would I be able to sue
because they are being anti-competitive towards my business?

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tomku
No, Google is under no legal obligation whatsoever to link to your site, let
alone promote your site/topic using keyword autocompletion or instant
searches. There's more to the legal definition of "anti-competitive behavior"
than "anything that hurts someone else's business", although it's vague enough
that I can understand the confusion.

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grecy
I was actually suggesting suing the government for forcing Google to remove my
legal business from the index.

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tomku
Did you read the article? This is about autocompletion and automatic Google
Instant searches, not removing anyone from the index. As with the huge list of
terms that are currently "censored" (including every adult-oriented term they
could think of), you just have to type the word without autocomplete and press
enter to see the results.

In any case, suing the government for anti-competitive behavior doesn't really
make any sense. Governments have much wider powers of regulation than
businesses do, and for good reason. You could try a free speech lawsuit, but
it'd depend on your country's free speech laws. One potential snag is that in
the scenario you described, it's not really YOUR speech that's being
restrained, but Google's.

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cageface
And people just change the names and the whole circus starts all over again.

I'm 100% against copyright infringement but this is energy in the wrong
direction.

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Zenst
Interesting, so since the FBI seized the megaupload domain at the start of the
year. Now apparently it is to be blocked by google thru a court order. Can the
FBI be trusted to look after your domain you do have to wonder.

Will make for some interesting stories and legal angles down the line.

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malandrew
What about legitimate uses like "ubuntu torrent" or "centos torrent"?

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wmf
...in France.

