Public Sites/Search Engines

Archive for the ‘Public Sites/Search Engines’ Category

February 5th, 2011

Anti-Piracy, Copyright Issues, File Sharing, Gang Gang Play, Hot Topic, Illegal & BitTorrent Network, Legal, Net Stuff, Peer to Peer, Public Sites/Search Engines, The Pircay Bureau

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MPAA Snags Google Downloading Torrents, Threatens to Disconnect

In recent months Google has received dozens of copyright infringement warnings from MPAA-affiliated movies studios. While most of these notices are directed at users of Google’s public Wi-Fi service, a few also appear to be directed at employees at Google’s headquarters. The movie studios are not happy and are warning the search giant that it might get disconnected from the Internet.

Image is Loading.... Every year, the major movie studios and record labels send out tens of thousands of warnings to Internet users who are suspected of sharing their content using BitTorrent. These infringement notices are meant to inform users of their wrongdoings, and to convince the recipients to never download anything again.

The process works as follows. The copyright holders hire companies such as BayTSP and MediaSentry to track down people who share certain titles on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks. These companies then join the swarm and request files from others. When someone shares a piece of the file with them, they log the IP-address, look up the ISP and send out an infringement notice automatically.

Most of the notices are sent out to the larger ISPs who are then asked to forward them to the customers in question, but search giant Google has also been receiving quite a few. A search on ChillingEffects – a site that collects some of the DMCA notices that are sent to Google – reveals that more than 100 of these automated warnings were sent to Google in the past several months.

Since Google also offers Wi-Fi hotspots in some cities, most of the infringers are not actually sharing material directly from Google headquarters. However, in some cases these warnings do appear to be aimed at Google employees. This is an awkward situation for a company that is trying to help out the entertainment industry, and has even revealed a censorship policy towards certain BitTorrent-related terms.

But there is more. If we believe some of the notices sent to Google, the company is at risk of losing its connection to the Internet.

“Copyright infringement also violates your ISP’s terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities,” the movie companies write in various letters.

The above text is of course intended for average consumers, but in this case it appears to be directed at Google. Not that we (or Google) have to worry about it much. Although the copyright holders use strong language, these kind of notices are nothing more than a warning, and they never lead to legal action.

At the bottom of each notice there is generally some info about the alleged infringer, in the following format.

Infringing Work: The Green Hornet
First Found: 2 Feb 2011 16:57:21 EST (GMT -0500)
Last Found: 2 Feb 2011 16:57:21 EST (GMT -0500)
IP Address: 216.239.XXX.XXX
IP Port: 14077
Protocol: BitTorrent
Torrent InfoHash: 42708AA384CF93EC6B67E6CEFB6E27B32362F689
Containing file(s): The Green Hornet TS(iPod.Zune.PSP).torrent (442,480,008 bytes)

Of the 100 latest infringement notices received by Google for sharing copyright works, most of them are associated with IP-addresses used by Wi-Fi customers while a few point to Google’s headquarters. Even though they are posted on ChillingEffects (some redacted, some with full IPs) it is impossible to tell whether the company has forwarded them to employees, if these are traceable at all.

The movie companies, however, do have some advice for Google.

“An MPAA website, www.respectcopyrights.org, offers step-by-step instructions to ensure that your Internet account is not being used to violate the copyright laws. Also, the site can point you to an array of legal choices for enjoying movies and TV shows online. You can also learn there how theft of motion pictures and TV shows damages our economy and costs thousands of Americans their jobs,” they write.

The most recent notices received by Google were sent on behalf of Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures for the illicit sharing of The Fighter and The Green Hornet respectively. In total, Google has published 20+ of these warning letters in the last 30 days.

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January 26th, 2011

CopyFight, Evil, Evil Next, File Hosting Services, File Sharing, Hot Topic, Illegal & BitTorrent Network, Net Stuff, Peer to Peer, Pirate Talk, Public Sites/Search Engines, Rapid Share, Red Hot, Special, Twist

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Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

It’s taken a while, but Google has finally caved in to pressure from the entertainment industries including the MPAA and RIAA. The search engine now actively censors terms including BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload from its instant and autocomplete services. The reactions from affected companies and services are not mild, with BitTorrent Inc., RapidShare and Vodo all speaking out against this act of commercial censorship.

The entertainment industries’ quest to root out piracy on the Internet has yet again resulted in commercial censorship. A few weeks ago Google announced that it would start filtering “piracy related” terms from its ‘Autocomplete‘ and ‘Instant‘ services and today they quietly rolled out this questionable feature.

Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.

Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.

All combinations of the word “torrent” are also completely banned. This means that “Ubuntu torrent” will not be suggested as a user types in Ubuntu, and the same happens to every other combination ending in the word torrent. This of course includes the titles of popular films and music albums, which is the purpose of Google’s banlist.

We contacted BitTorrent Inc. for a reaction, and Simon Morris told us that he believes the scope of this filter is too broad.

“We respect Google’s right to determine algorithms to deliver appropriate search results to user requests. That being said, our company’s trademarked name is fairly unique, and we’re pretty confident that anyone typing the first six or seven letters deserves the same easy access to results as with any other company search,” Morris said.

“A quick search for ‘BitTorrent’ currently returns a variety of legitimate and useful links, including company information, our software, our open-source protocol, and more. What Google may not realize is that our technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large,” he added.

Google’s New “Piracy” Filter (No AutoComplete)

What is most surprising about the new filter is that the keywords appear to be picked arbitrarily. It includes BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent and Xunlei, but not BitComet and Vuze. While cyberlockers such as RapidShare and Megaupload are banned, prominent sites such as 4shared, HotFile and MediaFire are not.

In addition, all the names of popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay are not included in Google’s banlist either. BitTorrent’s Simon Morris agrees that this is odd, to say the least.

“There’s no reason for Google to throttle search results for our trademarks, including BitTorrent, µTorrent and torrent. Indeed, they do still enable autocomplete for many third-party clients that use the BitTorrent protocol, including BitComet, BitLord, and even sites like The Pirate Bay and Isohunt.”

Morris further points out that the inclusion of Xunlei is a little hypocritical since Google is one of the investors in the Chinese BitTorrent client.

“We’d also like to point out that while Google doesn’t enable autocomplete for Xunlei (China’s largest software client that uses the BitTorrent protocol) Google did invest $5 million in the company in 2006, according to reports,” Morris says, adding, “We sincerely hope Google will recognize the value of BitTorrent and reevaluate this decision expeditiously.”

RapidShare is not pleased with Google’s new filter either, at least not with its current scope in today’s roll-out.

“We knew about Google’s plans for quite a few weeks now. We embrace that certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests of our users will also be affected. We believe it was the wrong decision to remove the term ‘RapidShare’ from the search suggestions,” RapidShare told us.

“RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their perfectly legitimate interests. That is why Google has obviously gone too far with censoring the results of its suggest algorithm. A search engine’s results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody else’s,” the company added.

Indeed, RapidShare has certainly touched a nerve here. It is clear that this filter is the result of pressure from the entertainment industries, which is not at all in the interests of users. Now that Google has begun proactively censoring their services for commercial reasons, more companies will demand the same. At the same time, the entertainment industries will continue to pressure Google to go even further, and censor the actual search results.

Apparently Google has decided that its users should not be searching for the keyword BitTorrent, so why list any results then? It’s the beginning of the end.

Jamie King, the founder of Vodo – a platform where artists can share their work with million of people at no cost – agrees with this assessment. Searching for one of their perfectly legal releases on Google used to suggest the word “torrent” with a link to the download page, but not anymore.

“Google already showed it will censor for the highest bidder — China Inc. springs to mind. Now it’s doing it for MPAA & Co.,” King told us.

“I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes.”

Indeed, Google is going down the wrong path by willingly and broadly censoring its services to please a few big companies. This is not the way to get rid of piracy, it’s the way to a corporate controlled Internet. Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide.

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May 27th, 2010

Hot Topic, Legal Issues, Public Sites/Search Engines, Telenor, The Pirate Bay

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Pirate Bay must stay blocked:Supreme Court

About 2 years ago the IFPI and other copyright groups brought action against Danish ISP Telenor demanding that it should block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay. Following a hearing which began a week ago, the Supreme Court in Denmark has just ruled that The Pirate Bay must continue to be blocked, upholding previous rulings by lower courts.

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Following a court case initiated by the IFPI, in early 2008 a Danish judge ruled that ISP Telenor (then Tele2) should block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. IFPI, representing the major recording labels, had successfully argued that Telenor was assisting in mass copyright infringement.

Later in 2008 the Eastern High Court upheld the earlier ruling but Telenor, with the support of other ISPs, said they would continue to fight. In April 2009 a Danish appeals body accepted a petition (TF) from the ISP to take the case to the Supreme Court.

“We are pleased that we now have the opportunity to find out whether it is Internet Service Providers’ responsibility to ensure the closure of a website,” noted Telenor’s regulatory chief Nicholai Kramer Pfeiffer. Representatives from the music industry believed a decision in their favor was required.

“The principle is extremely important in this case. If the Supreme Court unblocks The Pirate Bay, it means that people can abuse the Danish artists’ music again,” said Martin Arnoldsen, Executive Director of the Danish Musicians’ Union. “Many people may think that musicians are living a life with lots of money, but this is not the reality.”

The Supreme Court hearing began last week on May 20th, with Telenor making its final attempt to have the earlier decision overruled and therefore unblocking The Pirate Bay.

“The central legal argument of IFPI in this case is a statement in Danish copyright law: Any copying due to exceptions in copyright is illegal if the ‘original’ being copied is an illegal copy,” Ole Husgaard of the Danish Pirate Party told last night.

“Because the ISP makes temporary copies of small fragments of the copyrighted work as IP packets pass their routers, the ISP violates copyright if one of their customers downloads an illegal copy. But this requirement of a ‘legal original’ is not allowed in the EU Infosoc directive in the case of ‘a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary’ (Article 5.1(a)). So here our local law violates EU law,” he explained.

Husgaard told that the top civil servant in the Danish government responsible for copyright law at the time Infosoc was implemented in local law was Peter Schønning.

“Today he is no longer a civil servant. Now he is employed by IFPI, and is running the legal proceedings to get the Pirate Bay blocked for IFPI,” says Husgaard.

Today the Supreme Court announced its decision and the IFPI came out on top. Telenor – and by extension other ISPs – must continue to DNS-block The Pirate Bay so that Danish subscribers cannot access the site.

“With the Supreme Court upholding an ISP ban against providing customer access to The Pirate Bay it is clearly necessary to have legislative changes,” say the Pirate Party in a response to the ruling.

“Our copyright law should be addressed, so it is no longer in breach of EU law. And the Procedure Code should be amended so the rules on preliminary injunction can no longer be misused by, for example, IFPI to achieve a better position than they are entitled.”

Stay tuned for updates

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May 22nd, 2010

Isohunt, Legal Issues, Public Sites/Search Engines

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US Court : Isohunt has to close U.S. Operation

The US District Court of California has issued a permanent injunction against the BitTorrent search engine isoHunt, forcing it to shut down in the United States. IsoHunt is expected to block all access to US visitors in response to the decision, but no action has been taken thus far.

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Early 2006, the MPAA issued a complaint against isoHunt and TorrentBox, claiming that owner Gary Fung operated file-sharing services and profited from copyright infringement.

Judge Stephen Wilson of the US District Court of California, Southern District issued a permanent injunction against the popular torrent site Isohunt yesterday, forcing the site and its owner Garry Fung to immediately prevent access to virtually all Hollywood movies.

Last month isoHunt chose to redirect (TF) all United States visitors to a Lite version of its website in a final attempt to prevent the search engine from having to close, but this was not enough according to the Court.Wilson now found that this is not enough. From the verdict

“Defendants’ proposed ‘primal’ or ‘lite’ website contains all of the same indexing and searching functions as the original websites, only with a different interface for the users to operate.”

The verdict also mentions that Isohunt clocks about 2.5 million unique monthly visitors from the U.S. alone.

The verdict does not necessarily mean that isoHunt will be unavailable in other parts of the world. Gary Fung earlier told that the ultimate measure would be to block access to visitors from the United States, which would also be sufficient to comply with the Court’s demands.

IsoHunt is not the first torrent site that has been put out of business in the United States by the MPAA. In the summer of 2007 a federal judge ruled that TorrentSpy (TF) had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities and these were to be handed over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision, TorrentSpy decided to block access to all US visitors instead which led to a huge drop in traffic. In 2008 TorrentSpy, once the largest torrent site on the Internet, closed its doors for good after it was ordered to pay a 110 million dollar fine.

Gary has to comply with the temporary injunction withing a day. The permanent injunction also holds for isoHunt’s sister sites TorrentBox, Podtropolis and Ed2k-it etc.

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