

Bing shows results that MS asked Google to take down - sendtopms
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120524/18190719071/odd-that-microsoft-demands-google-take-down-links-that-remain-bing.shtml

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mikeryan
You know this is one of those things that sounds terribly hypocritical but in
a massive company can easily be just the right hand not knowing what the left
hand is doing. Its hard for me to see this as anything more then typical large
co bureaucracy.

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latch
I'm not following...there aren't 2 parties. There's 1 party, the people
sending a take down notice. The question is why aren't they sending the same
take down notices to all search engines which have the material in question?

~~~
myko
Maybe they have and Bing just prioritizes requests differently?

This is interesting though, when I saw the headline about Microsoft making so
many takedown requests to Google I assumed the items to be taken down were
found by the Bing team, but it seems that isn't the case.

~~~
kenrikm
Maybe it is and the Bing team only uses Google to find the links. (lol)
Actually didn't Microsoft _force_ their employees to use only Microsoft
products? Sometimes it's not fun to eat your own dogfood.

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ishansharma
As far as I remember, it was them asking not to buy iPhone. Nothing more. They
can't force their employees to use only Microsoft products. They'd be down in
a day!

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barik
I've gotten several of these types of notices before. Usually, it isn't
Microsoft that does them directly ("Internet1@microsoft-antipiracy.com"). For
instance, the ones I've received as usually signed as "on behalf of Microsoft
Corporation" with some third-party legal firm blindly handing these out.

So the fact that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing is probably
quite accurate in this case.

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lmm
Or maybe this company that sent the takedowns, Marketly (not MS, just someone
with whom they have a contract), never sent takedowns to Bing. (Why is of
course open to speculation; maybe Bing isn't popular enough to be worth the
effort)

~~~
nextparadigms
That still leaves Microsoft in a position where they pay others to send
takedown notices to their competitor for the stuff they don't bother to take
down themselves. You'd think they'd do that for themselves, too, if they
thought those links are so horrible for their own business. My guess is they
just want to mess with Google and waste their time on money chasing hundreds
of thousands of links a month.

~~~
lmm
Man, you need to pay more attention to Hanlon's Razor. What's actually
happened is Microsoft's xbox division has paid this company to do something
about xbox piracy. And this company has sent takedowns (legitimate, I might
add) to google, not out of some dastardly plan to waste google's time, but to
try and make it harder to find pirated xbox games. The juiciest angle
supported by the facts is "third-party Microsoft supplier thinks google more
useful than bing", and while that's not exactly flattering to microsoft, it
tells us nothing we didn't already know.

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josefresco
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe MS is okay with Bing
returning results, even pirate results that Google does not.

Maybe MS agrees with the Pirate mantra that piracy doesn't hurt, but help
sales. What would happen if pirates, even casual pirates learned that Bing
results weren't filtered but Google's were? I would suspect a massive uptake
in usage if this was proven. And who are these pirates? They're the most geeky
of your friends, the ones who influence and tutor the non-tech savvy about
what tech products and services to use (Bing, Windows, Office etc.)

Crazy? Probably. But still fun to consider. Too bad MS is too big, slow and
traditional to do something this radical.

~~~
rbanffy
Protecting Microsoft's market share and its associated network effect is
_very_ important for them - if Windows' share falls below a certain level,
writing Word documents, sending PowerPoint presentations, keeping your e-mail
in Exchange and your workflows in SharePoint will make much less sense than it
does today. As it happens, Microsoft products become less attractive and their
share spirals toward an equilibrium point given by their cost/benefit ratio as
compared to their competitors.

Even if they lose some sales to piracy, as long as network effect work to
their advantage, it's worth to lose it to a free version of their product than
to a competitor.

It's unsurprising if they turn a blind eye to piracy when they judge it
benefits them.

Having said that, this looks a lot like incompetence, or a contractor that's
being paid to issue takedown notices only to Google.

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jcoder
Anyone else surprised that the use of "bitch" as a verb is suddenly acceptable
journalism?

~~~
Zirro
I don't think TechDirt aims to be "on par" with the traditional newspapers
when it comes to "controversial" language ;)

~~~
jcoder
Fuck, I don't give two shits about "controversial" language--but overtly,
aggressively sexist language? Fuck that.

~~~
Zirro
Wait, do you really consider "bitch" or "bitching" in these contexts sexist,
nowadays? I've seen it applied to both genders, and, as in this case, a verb.
It's moved on from the controversial stage to a common expression.

~~~
jcoder
No, I don't buy that at all. It's unfortunate that it has moved to the common
usage, because it is equivalent to "when you complain you sound like a woman,
and that is bad." People should learn to speak respectfully instead of
normalizing legitimately offensive language.

~~~
jcoder
@karunamon Sorry, no. There's normalization due to changing norms and morays
(e.g., "shit"), then there's normalization that's designed to subordinate a
group (do you see many whites calling an unfamiliar black man "boy"?). This is
much more like the latter. If you would tell your wife, girlfriend, or female
coworker to "stop bitching" when she has something to say that you don't want
to hear, then you are a chauvinistic asshole.

Whoever was the first to say "shit" causally was probably considered rude.
Then others got used to it and decided that it wasn't rude. But the meaning
did not actually change.

Whoever was the first to use "bitch" as a verb was almost certainly a male
asshole who wanted to subordinate the woman he was talking to. By repeating
it, that is the sentiment you are reinforcing, because the meaning does not
change. You're normalizing female subordination.

It actually has a lot of parallels with how language changed during and after
slavery. Black men call each other "boy" (among other words) and it is
positive. Women start groups like "stitch 'n bitch," and it is positive. But
if you started referring to your wife's book club as "books and bitching,"
that's negative. You may not think it's fair, but it's _their word_.

~~~
chc
> _the meaning does not change_

Your entire argument seems to be predicated on this idea. But the thing is,
pretty much every linguist in the world would disagree with the notion. The
connotations of words are constantly shifting — there is ample evidence of
this throughout the history of languages.

I applaud you for thinking about this sort of thing and speaking out about it,
but in this particular case I think you're tilting at windmills.

Even if we accepted this absolutist stance where words' meanings do not change
no matter what the common perception or intent of the speaker might be, it
still wouldn't be offensive to women. If the word's connotation is immutable,
then it does not refer to human women at all, but to dogs, and thus human men
have just as much right to the word as human women do. But surely you'd agree
the word has acquired new connotations since then, contrary to your claim
above.

There might have been some point in history at which your stance was the right
one, but if there was, I think that time is long gone. I don't know if you're
just that old or if your regional dialect is odd in this regard, but I'm
pretty sure the verb "bitch" is not gendered in most people's mental lexicons
today. Because it is not particularly associated with them, it does not
actually do any harm to women as a group if you use it.

(Note that all this is distinct from the noun "bitch," which is applied to men
but is still has gendered associations. Probably best to avoid that one. And
obviously avoid both in formal contexts.)

~~~
lolcraft
That is crazy. I mean, The Chronic came out in 2001. It's not that long ago.
Gangsta h-hop profuse in "BEE-ATCH!" exclamations, as referring to women, is
still being produced. Abusive husbands still call their wives bitches. You
might be fortunate enough to live in some sort of cultural coordinate in which
this is old and odd, but I would struggle seriously to call that situation a
representative sample.

To put it the offensive way, nowadays it might be hip and such for white boys
to address themselves as niggas, as it has being normalised by hip-hop
spatters into the new bro. Still, no non-asshole honky would do so to an
actually black person. It would be pretty insensitive, for starters.

~~~
chc
Reread the last paragraph of my comment. You're talking about the noun, which
I intentionally mentioned to head off responses like this. Yes, that word is
offensive. We're talking about a different word.

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nextstep
_Now, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that if Marketly is sending a
takedown to Google to get such a link taken out of its search engine, on
behalf of Microsoft, that it quite likely is issuing the same kind of takedown
to Microsoft's Bing (hell, you'd perhaps think that Microsoft could just pull
the link without a takedown)._

I doubt that Microsoft is streamlined enough to allow different departments
(Bing and whomever handles DMCAs) to effectively communicate. Microsoft is an
immense bureaucracy.

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digitalman
MS hires a third party to police these SERPs. The third party does't send
notices to Bing because they'd be threatening their own client! It's that
simple.

Anything more would require additional effort and initiative and coordination
between the contracting team, the contractor, and the Bing team. Probably
someone just hired the third party, turned them loose and didn't put any more
thought into it.

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A1kmm
It seems surprising that Microsoft even owns copyright in the works that are
claimed.

"Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction" is apparently a Ubisoft product,
which is a publicly traded company distinct from Microsoft.

Copyright in "Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga" is apparently held by
LucasArts.

While they all appear to be Xbox 360 games, being a platform manufacturer
doesn't usually mean you own the content produced for that platform. It is
possible that the games linked against a Microsoft library, and are infringing
against the Microsoft's rights in the library, but then the declaration needs
to declare that "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of
the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" - which means
that the allegation of what is being infringed (i.e. a library and not the
entire work) should have matched the work Microsoft owned.

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calbear81
I don't even think it was Bing who asked for those links to be removed, it was
actually the X-Box division trying to prevent piracy of games on their
platform. If anything, Bing probably is much slower and less adept at being
able to block these results when compared to Google hence the discrepancy.

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jitbit
Oh, come one people.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor>

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merraksh
If we were to ascribe this to malice, MS achieves two things. First, those
search results won't be available at least on one of the main search engines,
and this has the effect of cutting the number of illegal downloads. Second, MS
has just gotten some traffic to Bing --- MS sure won't be happy to see all
those requests for Xbox game torrents, but now it has a little more control on
them.

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ishansharma
But what are they trying to gain? Users? For me, if I do not find a result on
Google, search is over. I never try Bing!

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mossplix
Bing tracks everyone who clicks the links

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wastedbrains
wow that is some interesting corporate issues... Look our search engine is
better it has so many more results... Which we believe to be illegal links and
won't let any other search engines help you find... Bing, the best for your
warez needs.

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bobsy
Its odd. Its either an over sight. Takedown lost in bureaucracy.

Or.. perhaps comically. This is a third party issueing takedowns on Microsofts
behalf. Isn't submiting to Bing due to lack of market share?

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cpeterso
Google send takedown requests to Bing for these same Microsoft links.

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ktizo
I am loving the takedown notice for the takedown notice.

[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/requests/133649/)

Perhaps this is the solution to the entire problem, trap the whole system in a
recursive loop. Although then perhaps all the telephones in the world will
ring until Douglas Hofstadter answers one of them.

~~~
raldi
Is that a reference to something? I'm imagining Hofstadter telling fans to
call a number at random, and ask the person who answers to call another number
at random and repeat the request to whoever answers, with the end result being
that Hofstadter's phone would ring and you could talk to him. That sounds like
something he'd do, but I can't find a mention of it on Google.

~~~
ktizo
End of lawnmower man.

[edit] but with Douglas Hofstadter. And a kitten. But the kitten is just out
of shot, so we can't really see it.

