

Chilling Effects removes itself from search engines - jarcane
http://torrentfreak.com/chilling-effects-dmca-archive-censors-itself-150110/

======
TheDong
This is just further proof of how broken the system is.

The DMCA notices are to take down Google search results. These results are not
the infringement (the search page is not displaying copyrighted data, just
linking to a site that does) and the site with the infringing content is still
there.

This flaw means that correct DMCA notices, even when acted upon, will contain
links to infringing material that is still up because the notice is not to
take down the infringing material, just links to it.

Normally correct notices should be fine to display and index after they've
been acted upon because the content is gone and similarly incorrect ones
should be fine to display because the content is not infringing.

The very premise of Google removing search results is flawed and results in
this sillyness.

~~~
teejmya
I don't know the exact details, but I was pretty sure that since they linked
to but don't host the content, they don't have to abide by DMCA requests for
that content? Something about a Microsoft v TicketMaster case?

Does anyone know enough about this to help me out?

~~~
TheDong
They are effectively required to though.

If you listened to the SOPA hearings, for example, not a one of the lawmakers
understood that Google was not hosting the pages. They all think of Google as
basically the internet.

If Google does not make an effort, as they do, then it would be a PR disaster.

------
DanBC
Has anyone done an audit of the content of Chilling Effect? Because while ...

> Copyright Alliance CEO Sandra Aistars describe[s] the activities of the
> Chilling Effects projects as “repugnant.”

... I think it's pretty repugnant that companies can spew malformed incorrect
DMCA requests and let other people pay the costs of fixing the resulting mess.

------
gizmo686
The Chilling Effects robots.txt file [1]. Does anyone know what the user-agent
"Google-Legal-Removals" is for?

Returning to the subject at hand, what are they trying to do by making
themselves non-index-able? If I search something on Google and a link has been
removed, I still get linked to the DMCA request on chillingeffects that still
has the removed url on it. If I go to the chillingeffects website, they still
offer a search feature.

[1]
[https://www.chillingeffects.org/robots.txt](https://www.chillingeffects.org/robots.txt)

------
gcb0
on the same week that its usefulness was shinning all over by displaying
abusive take down notices on github[1]? The MAFIAA lawyers are a quick and
smart bunch, i will give them that.

[1]
[https://gist.github.com/Psycojoker/69c00d0d11f26a46ac93](https://gist.github.com/Psycojoker/69c00d0d11f26a46ac93)

~~~
userbinator
Indeed, I don't think it's coincidental. There was previous HN discussion on
that here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8848544)

------
declan
There's been a long-running effort by the copyright lobby to muzzle Chilling
Effects. Participants in that effort include Sony, Disney, NBCUniversal,
Viacom, BSA, Universal Music, the Entertainment Software Association, and two
of my previous employers (before I left to found
[http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/)), CBS and TimeWarner. They're all
members of the Copyright Alliance, which has previously had this to say about
Chilling Effects:

 _The activities of chillingeffects.org are repugnant to the purposes of
Section 512. Data collected by high-volume recipients of DMCA notices such as
Google, and senders of DMCA notices such as trade associations representing
the film and music industries demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of
DMCA notices sent are legitimate, yet the site unfairly maligns artists and
creators using the legal process created by Section 512 as proponents of
censorship. Moreover, by publishing the personal contact information of the
creators sending notices (a practice which Chilling Effects only recently
discontinued), it subjects creators to harassment and personal attacks for
seeking to exercise their legal rights. Finally, because the site does not
redact information about the infringing URLs identified in the notices, it has
effectively become the largest repository of URLs hosting infringing content
on the internet._
([https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140317/11355726599/copyr...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140317/11355726599/copyright-
alliance-attacks-chilling-effects-clearinghouse-argues-dmca-system-with-no-
public-accountability.shtml))

It would be interesting to know how much influence the copyright lobby has had
on Chilling Effects' decision to self-censor.

For now, though, if Chilling Effects has chosen to remove itself from search
engines, then presumably some enterprising soul might want to mirror the
takedown notices posted on that site. That would continue to shed light on
abuses of copyright, such as the demands recently made to get Github pages
yanked from search engines.

Note it's often copyright lobby lawyers sending these takedown nastygrams, and
those lawyers could claim their letters are copyrighted (and, I suppose, even
try to get search engines to de-index the mirror site). While they have been
unwilling to sue Harvard, Berkeley, and Stanford law schools, they may be more
likely to sue an individual running a mirror site, even if that lawsuit were
spurious.

So if such a mirror site were to be created, it might make sense for it to be
hosted overseas where the local law permits and operated by someone living
overseas. The domain chilledeffects.org is available...

------
userbinator
What is scary about this level of censorship is that it shows just how much
power these big corporations have over what people can find on the Internet.
"If I can't find it on Google, it doesn't exist" is what the majority of users
think, and they're exploiting that sentiment.

I think there is no better time than now for the development of new search
engine technologies that could be resistant to censorship by being widely
distributed, much like how protocols such as BitTorrent revolutionised file
sharing.

Oddly enough, if I do the query "site:chillingeffects.org" with Google right
now, I get the same single result as shown in the article, but also a "In
order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very
similar to the 1 already displayed." message, and if I click that link there,
I see "About 1,720,000 results" (of which a very small number are actually
accessible), some of them being notices.

------
Sxw1212
Chilling Effects is still listed on DuckDuckGo. They didn't remove themselves
from there.

~~~
lcedp
DuckDuckGo utilizes Bing, Yandex and other sources

------
eridal
Can we mirror the site using a domain CNAME'd to CE?

If we managed to get a bunch of them, and if those get removed, we could use
another new domains.. It's a never ending game that guarantee we win -- except
they take down the site.

~~~
TheDong
a cname wouldn't work because it would also have the CE robots.txt, but if you
used a sufficiently intelligent proxy that stripped robots.txt and rewrote
links then it probably would work, but I don't think that's a good idea
regardless.

------
newaccountfool
Surely their next step is to try and get Google to sensor this page.

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

as it will provide links to all of the pirate websites that hosts infringing
content?...Time to get parsing those CSVs.

All the data from removals can be found here.
[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/data/)

------
Animats
Not removed from all search engines. Just Google. Bing works just fine. So do
the little guys, like DuckDuckGo. "robots.txt":

    
    
        User-agent: Google-Legal-Removals
        Disallow:
    
        User-agent: Googlebot
        Noindex: /
        Allow: /pages
    
        User-agent: *
        Disallow: /
        Allow: /pages

~~~
Tobu
That /robots.txt does tell the other bots to not crawl most of the site. These
results are unlikely to stay.

------
kazinator
So you can't search chillingeffects.org using the "site:" syntax on Google?

Big deal!

The site has its own self-powered search box.

Also, the self-censorship only means that pages from that site won't be in the
Google index (and others). Pages which talk about the site and link to it will
still be there. It's not some kind of complete blackout.

------
monochromatic
This is a joke, right?

------
closetnerd
Honestly, that was inevitable.

~~~
newaccountfool
Wait, why?

~~~
closetnerd
Well first it was ridiculous enough search engines were being censored when
we're so against the concept of the Great Firewall of China.

To console the people, they started the Chilling Effects project to "stick it
to the man". Once enough time had passed, and the hearts had quelled, they'd
eventually contest the Chilling Effects project.

Mission accomplished.

~~~
newaccountfool
Yeah I agree with that, the internet has gone to shit in the last few years
with this. The system is a bit messed, your going to have to sign up for three
services minimum Netflix, Hulu and Amazon just to get about half of the TV
shows.

In the UK however we have ISPs blocking domains, but people just keep putting
up ore and more domains to curcumvent it. It won't stop.

------
forrestthewoods
That's clever. Evil, but clever. Had never considered this use. Sneaky
bastards.

