
Companies that make money by distributing misleading versions of VLC - etix
http://blog.l0cal.com/2011/07/07/these-companies-that-mislead-our-users/
======
jbk
Disclaimer: VLC dev and VideoLAN chairman

I think the worse part of all this mess is that Google refuses to act and stop
those. This was requested quite a few time and Google told us to go away
because we didn't own all the trademarks in the US (even though we still have
copyright).

Moreover, the safe-browsing initiative, used in Chrome 12, is a complete joke.
Reporting one of those websites make the safe-browsing re-scan the website,
and find absolutely no issue with it and white-label it, which is even
worse...

I contacted the Safe-Browsing initiative to report the issue and they told me
"that their wasn't any issue on those websites...". Right...

Of course, running any of those executables on your Windows machine makes MSE
(or other antivirus) scream...

I hope that Google fighting spam initiative will improve the situation, but
seeing <http://vlc-download.com/> on the first page of "VLC" search makes me
wondering...

~~~
gaius
Well, this is about misalignment of incentives. If you are a search user, you
are not Google's _customer_. You are their _product_. They sell you to people
who buy adwords - whoever they may be.

~~~
rryan
OK, this line of reasoning is all over the place. All it does is expose that
you know close to nothing about how Google works. There are in fact, many
hundreds of engineers whose sole incentive (e.g. promotions and salary
adjustments) and purpose in their job is to make sure that your search results
are good.

These engineers are /not/ the engineers that are in charge of designing or
running the systems that sell ads. In fact, those are two completely different
divisions of the company. (If you would like to learn more about how Google
works from the inside, I suggest reading Steven Levy's book "In the Plex")

Just because you do not pay for something does not mean it is not a product.
If search was not good, people would go to a competitor. This is how Google
got to where it is today, and bing.com is just a click away. This thread is
about the quality of Google search results, and your argument is that Google
does not care about the quality of your search results because they allow you
to use it free of charge by inserting labeled advertisements.

To me, this is not a logical argument -- your emotions and sense of being
wronged have taken over.

~~~
rryan
Replying to self since we are at the max depth.

So, from the perspective of a business analyst, you are saying that Google has
no incentive to ensure the quality of their search results because they don't
receive any additional money from the people who use it?

That sounds like very short-term thinking to me, and Google is a famously
long-term thinking company.

OT your line of reasoning reminds me of Excite when they were considering
using Google's results. "[Google] was too good. If Excite were to host a
search engine that instantly gave people information they sought, [Excite's
CEO] explained, the users would leave the site instantly." [1]

[1] <http://cdixon.org/2011/05/16/accurate-contrarian-theories/>

~~~
gaius
No, of course they do, but only so you'll come back and can be shown more ads.
And "incentive" is quite literal: ads are Google's main (only?) revenue
stream. If they don't get eyeballs, they have no inventory of product to sell
to their real customers.

Look, I'm not saying this is good or bad. But it is what it is.

~~~
scott_s
Well, you're saying "it is what it is," but you're only providing arguments,
not evidence. I think rryan has presented actual evidence in the form of how
Google is structured.

~~~
gaius
But don't you see that if Google sells no ads, those people working to make
your search better don't get paid either?

~~~
scott_s
I can _see_ that, but you're making the fundamental mistake that just because
something is _plausible_ that it is actually happening. There's enough moving
parts here that arguments are not sufficient.

~~~
wnight
No, it is a valid point. To lose sight of that is to forget they're a
business.

You don't pay them directly. Yes, they get paid based on your repeat usage,
but they get paid by advertisers.

------
troymc
Last week, I changed my default search in Chrome to DuckDuckGo. Today when I
do a search for VLC Media Player I get the "VLC media player" Wikipedia
article in the red box at top, and <http://www.videolan.org/vlc> as the top
search result, with a nice little "Official site" label beside it.

I'm increasingly delighted by DuckDuckGo.

------
darklajid
I wonder if there are any SEO people out there, doing pro-bono (is that even
the right term?) work for open source projects like this?

It should be possible to fight back (or, as was discussed/suggested before,
search engines are just broken).

~~~
patio11
~2 minutes of pro-bono work:

<http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/>

Put in name of the bad guys. Find the blogs who blogged about their sites.

[http://webylife.com/design/top-10-brand-logo-
mistakes/commen...](http://webylife.com/design/top-10-brand-logo-
mistakes/comment-page-1/)

<http://www.dragonblogger.com/entertainment-television/>

etc, etc. Contact them, ask them to change the link to the spam site with a
link to your site.

It's stupid gruntwork, you'll need lots of it, and it will be like playing
whackamole -- but it will probably work at getting them off the front page.

The other alternative, rather than de-ranking their sites, is to rank more of
your own, or parasite off of high authority sites. For example, notice
Wikipedia ranks for VLC right now? You know who else would rank for VLC with a
trivial amount of effort? Github (&etc -- just has to be on any domain other
than yours). Is there an OSS industry mag that you guys like? Have they
written a review of it? Get your community to link to that review, with
whatever anchor text you're having trouble with.

OSS projects shouldn't have really serious SEO issues for branded keywords --
you practically _swim_ in link equity -- and wouldn't if marketing were
treated as a priority worth addressing.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
VLC has been linked by high profile sites for many years now. Adding yet
another link from "linuxmag" isn't going to help.

The real issue is that the SEO guys are just too good and can poison the well
with impunity. I feel only better competition can help this. Maybe the Bing
guys can do a better job and eat Google's lunch. Quick search on Bing shows
the first few links are legit but the last one isn't (and is identified as
adware by our Sonicwall). Also, the ads Bing produces are fake too. Guess no
one is doing a good job in this regard. I suspect shit like this is why PC
users are clamoring for an "App Store." They need someone to help them
properly install software.

~~~
bkudria
LinuxMag is hardly high-profile. It's audience is pretty focused and limited.
I imagine the audience size of the referring site influences Google's rank on
the SERP.

------
rwmj
One problem with VLC is the genuine site's URL is not obvious. It is:

<http://www.videolan.org/vlc/>

but it's competing against (spammy) sites like "vlcdownload.org".

If they had vlc.com or changed their name to videolan, then it'd be better
IMHO.

------
MetaMan
I think the real issue is that there is a misalignment of "business models".

On the one hand you have an open Source project with little funding relying on
a small group of volunteers acting mostly out of a sense of social
responsibility and on the other hand you have dishonest rip-off artists able
to make money for free with little or no practical sanction applied.

Its not really google's job to police the web (Note I'm not condoning Google's
behaviour). The extent to which they do this depends on how well that policing
activity aligns with their business interests.

The root problem is profit Vs non-profit in an environment with dis-interested
/ conflicted and or toothless regulatory bodies.

IMHO Money is metaphor for power and as long as VLC/VideoLAN is a 'not-for-
profit' organisation they will have problems.

------
billpg
So distributing copy of VLC with lots of malware added but still conforming
with the GPL is okay?

~~~
jbk
Yes, this is ok, as long as VLC copyright is concerned.

However:

\- Claiming that you are the original Author is not OK, because of copyright
laws.

\- Adding restrictions on the usage of the software is not OK, because of the
GPL.

\- As the VLC installer is GPL, the modified installers must be GPL'd too.

\- Shipping VLC commercially means shipping all the source code of all
external libraries, which they usually don't. (Still GPL)

\- VLC, VideoLAN, x264 and VLC media player Trademarks are registered.
(depends on the countries)

\- Scraping the website and the images is not ok. (copyright)

\- Wrongly impersonating a person or an organisation is not ok either.

~~~
omouse
Which of those would be okay in a copyright-less world? Which ones are
morally/ethically bad (without copyright law)?

~~~
rhizome
There is no "copyright-less world," but pot sure is fun, isn't it?

~~~
omouse
I don't smoke the chronic, thanks for making an assumption and reducing the
level of debate here to a juvenile level.

Laws aren't natural, they're man-made things and they can be removed if they
cause more problems than they solve.

------
zenspunk
Should Google somehow run background checks on every advertiser to see if
they're breaking some US law? (or other countries' laws?) What broken laws
should justify removal?

Should this be before or after they allow them to advertise? If before, this
would inconvenience the majority of advertisers who are legitimate. If after,
should Google investigate every incoming report of illegitimate advertising?
Or, how many reports should warrant an investigation by Google?

Regardless, can Google remove these Adword listings without legal issues (i.e.
without risking being sued)?

Getting these scammers off the front page of search would be relatively easy -
it can be solved algorithmically. They're probably working on it now, with
their anti-linkspam initiative.

But I don't see how Google could get them off Adwords without employing
hundreds or thousands of people to review advertisers, but this would create
more problems of greater magnitude than it would solve.

They could crowdsource it to narrow the (retrospective) review process, but
this would create a secondary market of advertising, which I doubt Google
wants, nor users would want to deal with.

I can't think of a way for Google to solve this problem without creating
larger ones.

It's the responsibility of governments -- not internet advertising platforms
-- to police copyright law.

~~~
numbsafari
Google wants to be a useful search engine that returns relevant results. If
they are returning links to malware/spyware/adware in exchange for money
rather than linking to legitimate results, don't you think that is not only
unethical but borderline illegal?

If Google's product is US then they are effectively selling US to the
malware/spyware/adware fiends.

Google absolutely has the responsibility to return relevant, meaningful and
SAFE results to its users. They already try and do that in a lot of cases.
It's just that, in this case, they are getting paid not to.

~~~
zenspunk
Did you not read my post? I said they could easily (relatively) solve the
issue of these guys turning up in search results.

The problem they can't solve, I argue, is to ensure that people violating
copyright law (of some arbitrary country) can't advertise with Adwords.

Edit: Look, I can do retrospective edits too!

~~~
jbk
We speak here about US law, not arbitrary country, because that where Google
is based.

They can solve the problem of checking reports on US copyright violations with
Adwords.

~~~
zenspunk
Google also does business and has employees and servers in many other
countries. Why should they not enforce the laws of those countries too?

~~~
jbk
Google refuses to comply to some French law about logs retention because their
servers are not in France. Why would it be otherwise in the opposite
situation?

------
mwill
Worth noting it seems many of the sites listed at the end of the post are now
offline.

~~~
jbk
It seems the OP was updated with a better list...

------
shadowflit
So of course I agree that spam results are the heart of evil. But I'm
confused. After reading the DDG comment, I plugged both "VLC" and "VLC Media
Player" into both google and DDG, expecting to see bad results at google.
Instead, the top 4 results (ignoring ads, of course) all point to
videolan.org. Is this a case of my results being pre-filtered or something? I
don't recall hitting the "this is stupid, make it go away" button too often on
Google.

------
TeMPOraL
Seeing that I am thinking more and more about creating a personal "never ever
work with those people/companies" database...

------
arihant
To me it appears that most have not changed the name and they are hosting the
download files for free. Not all darkness here.

------
Zeus-TheTrueGod
sudo apt-get install vlc. Really easy, so may be google is not the best way to
download and install software ?

~~~
rwmj
Obviously this is the best way to get it.

But when I send some video to my friends/relatives and they can't play it, I
have to say "use VLC". If I forget to send the URL, there's a danger they'll
fall into some spam site.

------
omouse
How can you say "intellectual" property and GPL in the same sentence? That's
fucked up, seriously. The whole point of the GPL is to help erode the
copyright system and make it unnecessary.

 _Of course this situation is not specific to VLC, other open source products
are affected by this scourge and there’s not much we can do about it. They
have the money to buy adwords, we don’t. Sadly, as a non-profit organization
we don’t have the money to sue them._

Really? You would sue them? That's kinda dumb don't you think? Kinda gives
legitimacy to the shitty copyright system...

Anyway, my solution would be to _ask for money_ so that you _can_ afford to
take some action.

The other half of this solution is to setup a few spammy/malware-looking
websites that offer the genuine product. Out-spam the spammers! There must be
a reason people are falling for the spammers' marketing after all.

And judging by the domain names, you failed to pick up on that marketing. They
have some key domain names; downloadvlcplayer.net, vlcdownload.org, vlc-media-
player-blog.com. Those domain names should have been bought up a while ago.
Create a new domain, something like free-vlc-download.com.

~~~
jbk
> How can you say "intellectual" property and GPL in the same sentence? That's
> fucked up, seriously.

You understand very little about GPL. GPL is very strongly linked to source
code copyright and source code modification. It isn't BSD or MIT.

> I don't think it's tAnd judging by the domain names, you failed to pick up
> on that marketing. They have some key domain names; downloadvlcplayer.net,
> vlcdownload.org, vlc-media-player-blog.com. Those domain names should have
> been bought up a while ago.

With what money?

