
Google Erases Thousands of Links, Tricked by Phony Complaints - known
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-dmca-copyright-claims-takedown-online-reputation-11589557001
======
Steven_Vellon
This is the expected result of increased scrutiny over Google. Whether or not
to respond to claims of abuse is a tradeoff between limiting false negatives
or limiting false positives. When there is an increase in the cost of false
negative, both monetary and in terms of status and reputation, then Google is
going to optimize to reduce false negatives at the expense of creating more
false positives.

This should definitely be part of the conversation when discussing regulating
content on Google and other large aggregators and social media platforms. I
find that the so-called "techlash" has resulted in more stringent policing of
content, but also greater opportunity to abuse reporting functionality. Using
copyright claims malicious has been a known practice for years now, at least
between content creators (e.g. feuding YouTubers having their fans report
rivals). I'm not surprised to see governments using the same tactics.

~~~
dependenttypes
Google pretty often refuses to respond to counter-dmcas, there is a lawsuit
currently over this. In addition recently lumen database stopped publishing
the full list of links in the dmca complaints.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Google pretty often refuses to respond to counter-dmcas,

There is not requirement to respond to DMCA notices or counternotices, doing
so merely protects against certain liability you might otherwise have. In the
case of counternotices, there generally is no liability to protect against
(because providers can usually structure agreements with users to avoid
liability for takedowns), and thus no reason to respond.

~~~
jrochkind1
Hmm, hypothetically if you blanket refuse to respond to coutnernotices, could
you lose your protection from liability under DMCA _in general_? Like even in
cases where no notice has been followed? Don't you have to follow the
procedures, including responding to counter notices, to be get the protection
from liability under DMCA in the first place?

Even if in theory, in practice we know the risk is vanishingly low of actually
being held liable for much.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Hmm, hypothetically if you blanket refuse to respond to coutnernotices,
> could you lose your protection from liability under DMCA in general?

No, DMCA safe harbor is transactional: if you respond to a particular
takedown, you are protected from liability to the issuer of the takedown for
the content. If you respond to a particular counternotice, you are protected
from liability to that user for taking down the content addressed by the
counternotice.

------
Guest0918231
I get emails all the time from Google about DMCA notices and pages from my
site being removed from search. They'll just give me a list of 100s of pages
that have been removed. The requests make absolutely no sense. For example,
it'll be a URL for a comment permalink, which redirects to a comment that
says, "Great!". The vast majority of the requests are because someone mentions
the name of a TV show or movie. Some company that represents them just issues
a DMCA removal for any page that uses their name, claiming it infringes on
their copyright. So, I've had thousands of pages removed from Google during
the past year. I don't have time to make counterclaims for each of them. Most
of them are old pages that receive little to no traffic. Still, it's a shame
for anyone trying to search for them.

~~~
smsm42
> Still, it's a shame for anyone trying to search for them.

They just have to not use Google. Fortunately, there are other search engines
around - such as DuckDuckGo.

------
WarOnPrivacy
This is the result of every "Remove Bad Internet Stuff" law.

------
mindfulhack
It's extremely important for the whole world to start to understand - as shown
by stories like this - that Google does not hold "the world's information"
anymore. Other search engines are increasingly needed. (Do I need to go back
to Dogpile?)

Yesterday I even noticed Google censoring an enquiry of mine which I happen to
know is a scientifically honest, but politically incorrect thing to apparently
ask in Google's particular culture. (It's quite a tame line of enquiry, and
not racist at all. In fact, it's information which can save lives, and yet
Google was blocking my access to that information.)

I had to use Yandex to even find what I was looking for.

Only Google, no more.

I cannot believe this - but I just tried my query in Dogpile, and it was
superior to both Google and Yandex.

~~~
kabacha
It's weirdly déjà vu to see this sort of sentiment to appear in every thread
about google and it's absolutely true — google's search quality has been on a
noticeable decline for years now.

It's especially funny to see headlines like "google achieves quantum
superiority" and "google can't understand the word 'without'" next to each
other. It almost seems like the search engine is being purposefully sabotaged
by google itself.

~~~
dodobirdlord
What the average user of Google wants is not what the average user of HN
wants, and it shows. The average Google user wants a semi-conversational query
engine. What the average HN user wants is probably more like a fuzzy regex
matcher. Google has gotten much better over the years for most of their
userbase.

If you put in "did the cubs win" you get a custom panel that tells you the
results of their latest few non-postponed games as sub-panels, with team logos
and everything. If you click though a sub-panel, it gives you some more info
and links to news articles. This is obviously a vastly improved experience
over previous years for what is clearly the intent behind this search.

Another example that's a favorite of mine. If you search for "gay indiana
mayor" the first result is the Wikipedia page for Pete Buttigieg. The next few
results are recent high-impact news articles about Pete Buttigieg. Why?
Because that's clearly what our hypothetical searcher was looking for. They
didn't want webpages that contain the words "gay", "indiana" and "mayor". They
wanted Pete Buttigieg, and his name is hard to remember how to spell.

~~~
rukshn
I totally have to agree on this.

Who would like to go back to the days where Google results were just a link
list? No average user wants that.

Plus not only that even if I Google a question regarding programming errors
they usually nails it with a stack overflow answer or any good blog post
within the first page.

~~~
kabacha
> No average user wants that.

That's a bit ignorant. There are many search terms that are literally
impossible to search for in google because it iterprets it as something else.

------
casefields
Mirror: [http://archive.md/7ShhN](http://archive.md/7ShhN)

------
aSplash0fDerp
I think much of this foreshadows how the infrastructure of networks will
evolve over the next decade to cope with difficulties of this nature.

There was a project I worked on several years that required becoming familiar
with SEO in the earlier days and tactics like this have exploded and become
more automated since 2010.

On a global network, enforcement hurdles (real or perceived) are turning the
information superhighway into a digital concentration camp.

I personally can enjoy an I.S.H. without having to access a global network and
forecast segmentation of networks branching off and web properties poping up
on the new canvas to cater to domestic or local norms, rather than accessing a
network where lowest common denominator dictatorship engagement/enforcement
cancels out any benefit of ease of data retrieval.

We can easily siphon anything from a global network, so IMO, you may still
access a network to assist with day-to-day tasks, but Internet 1.0`s days are
numbered as being part of many folks daily routine/lifestyle.

------
forgingahead
There is a deeper question here of: "Should information about people be
trivially easy to find via Google (or any search engine)?"

It's one thing to have the world's information available to learn and improve.
It's another to have any mention of your name going back decades easily
retrievable, whether that information may be true, false, slanderous,
complimentary, or what-have-you.

And what causes the threshold to be crossed? A friend who names you as part of
a pub-crawl/bachelor party in Las Vegas in a public social media post is
different from someone who is charged in court and found guilty of a crime.
But what about someone who is accused of a crime, but then acquitted later? Or
someone who is named in a civil suit that is later dropped?

I don't think we can have a blanket policy of these things but it certainly
makes sense for some measure of a "right-to-be-forgotten" mechanism to be in
place.

------
cycop
Zero financial incentive to stop phony complaints , lots of incentive to
ensure you comply with government regulations.

------
mirimir
OK, maybe Google is easily fooled, or maybe it cuts rights holders lots of
slack, or whatever.

But why would anyone need to search for pirated stuff using Google? For media
I just use TPB, and libgen for books. And I presume that streaming services do
their own searching.

------
tyingq
Reads like a how-to guide for anyone wanting to start their own "web
reputation management" company.

I'm guessing interest in this will die down, and Google won't change their
automated system.

------
tedunangst
Seems like google could use some of that ml magic to determine if a blog post
was published four months before the events it describes and maybe flag that
for further review.

~~~
withinboredom
There was a really interesting article posted a year-ish ago about a
company/person (I barely remember the details). Someone went and created a
random WordPress site, posted the article, and back-dated the post to make it
look like the article was stolen from them.

Last I heard, litigation was still on-going. I should probably have beers with
that person :soon:...

------
chx
How come Google can't detect who was there first? Last I checked they had a
massive index, timestamped even, of webpages. Dumbfounding.

~~~
smsm42
They could if they wanted to. They don't want to. There's no incentive for
them to do it right - overreacting protects them from large lawsuits from
people who can afford lawyers, and they don't care about anything else. If
some innocent blogger gets their blog removed from the index - who cares,
certainly not Google.

------
ezoe
Google don't negotiate.

I had an Blogger(run by Google) article removed by Google in 2019.

[https://cpplover.blogspot.com/2012/04/blog-
post_9853.html](https://cpplover.blogspot.com/2012/04/blog-post_9853.html)

This article quoted an interesting local Japanese news in 2012. It reported an
arrest of a suspect(with real name), the suspected crime was copyright
infringement for he quoted the local city's official web sites. This is
strange as the Japanese copyright clearly stated that the publication from the
government body cannot be copyrighted. It seems to me, that the suspect has
some kind of mental issues or strong personal dislike toward the local city he
is living. His web site blame every move by the local city, like he don't like
the recent announcement from the city as it can be interpreted to mean
malicious intent or blame the news of the minor crime by the local city's
civil servants. So I suspect that local city claimed the bogus copyright
violation and let local police arrest him to silence him.

What unusual about this removal is, that the reason they stated was
defamation, not the usual copyright violation claim that US infamously force
Web service provider to censor the information without the court order. As
this is not the usual DMCA takedown notice, they don't give a person who
claimed the defamation, so I cannot easily sue back the person who claimed
that.

The definition of the defamation varies between jurisdictions, In some
jurisdictions, the mere fact does not constitute as the defamation, In my
jurisdiction, Japan, simply stating the fact can be a defamation. But not all
statements be a defamation off course. The right to be forgotten does not
exist in Japan. So simply quoting the news source with real name of suspect
widely reported is not a defamation.

As I consulted with my lawyer, they advised me it doesn't worth it to take
action. This is the first case they've heard. As I stated in the beginning,
Google don't negotiate. It's so hard to negotiate with the real living human
from the Google as all the response from the Google is BOT. But at least, the
Google comply with the law and the court order. If it's DMCA takedown notice,
it should be trivial to reveal the claimer, as the law requires to reveal the
claimer.

There was interesting techniques to let google censor the information wide
spreading in the wild. That you sue without explicitly specify the defendant
in a minor country, win because there is no defendant to argue, using that
court order to let Google censor the information as Google at least comply
with the court order.

In my jurisdiction, Japan, there is a procedure to sue without specifying the
defendant, but it's rarely used. The court usually won't allow such procedure.
And in my case, I revealed my real name and address in my blog so it's
unlikely Japanese court allow such lawsuit to happen. I don't know about the
foreign countries but I cannot practically know the lawsuit of all the
countries in the world.

With the unusual defamation claim, and google don't reveal the information,
because of the rule "Google don't negotiate". If I were to sue the claimer,
First I have to sue the Google to reveal the information of claimers. It costs
so much money and time. This is my personal blog with no ad revenue. It
doesn't worth it.

Still, it's interesting who is the claimer. The local city and police won't do
this. No matter how corrupt they are, they can't do this. That leave the
suspect, but the article was written in favour to the suspect and if he has
the sane literacy and mental state, he won't interpret it as the defamation
toward him. But his web site was full of strange interpretation and hateful
interpretation on the local city's publication, I'm not so sure about this.
Still, it's strange he successfully let the Google remove the article of him
with unusual defamation claim.

There is another possibility that the third person, a complete stranger
claimed it just to screw me. But it's a tiny achievement considering the fact
that I have hundreds of article in Blogger, mirroring it to GitHub Pages, and
I can simply repost the same article to anywhere if I want to(with the
consequence on me if this really, legally constitute the defamation).

The moral is, Google don't negotiate.

------
drivebycomment
FWIW, the last Google's transparency report said 4.6B URLs removed. I wonder
how many were like like this. I suppose we would never know, since no human
can audit 4.6B URLs.

------
downerending
Not sure I believe Google is that gullible.

------
porksoda
wsj clickbait. tell us news.

------
fermienrico
It is funny how no one ever speaks of Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google - I
never hear anything from him. About the only time I've seen Sundar say
anything is a few mins of pre-rehearsed teleprompted speech at Google I/O,
mostly about AI buzzwords.

Sundar - if you're reading this, get on talk shows. Talk about your company
and it's future in candid, off-the-cuff manner. Put the corporate lingo behind
and speak in honest, truthful and unambiguous ways. You should be on Joe
Rogan, you should be doing more interviews and generally have a lively
presence. Look at how Stripe founders defend their company:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22937303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22937303)

What kind of leadership is this? In my opinion, Google's image and its opinion
has gone down hill since Sundar's appointment as CEO, but that's just a
general emotion I have - not sure if it is financially or more widely true.

~~~
tmpz22
A large part of Google's zeitgeist is the idea that they're these spunky
mysterious geniuses with bicycle meetings and volleyball courts. A really
smart engineer going on Joe Rogan would be an unmitigated disaster as Rogan
would constantly cut off his rhetoric knowing his audience would be completely
uninterested in any substantial technical speak.

It's people like Musk who understand PR and market manipulation who benefit
from talkshow rounds.

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see the real Google on full display, piercing
the veil of youtube DRM, Dragonfly, and Android app store permissions. But
Google will intelligently avoid that at all costs.

~~~
wnevets
Someone once called Rogan's podcast intellectual tourism and I haven't been
able to prove them wrong.

~~~
giggles_giggles
Maybe I'm stupid but could someone enlighten me as to what "intellectual
tourism" might mean? Is that like, a normal person pretending to be
intellectual, or is it like browsing Wikipedia with no specific purpose except
for the brain snacks? I can't even tell if that's an insult to Joe Rogan or
not.

~~~
_jal
Agree with the other poster, not an insult at all. Think pop-science books or
discussing Mayan art over beers.

I'd personally be thrilled if more people were intellectual tourists. In my
professional technical life, I'd far rather talk to people with a superficial
understanding than people who's mental model is part TV-hackers, part magic.

------
naruvimama
Not to mention the army of gatekeepers and moderators employed by the likes of
Twitter often in countries not know for democracy or free speech to take down
individuals.

At least some of it can be attributed to oil money greasing their palms.

