Google Changes 'To Fight Piracy' By Highlighting Legal Sites 160
mrspoonsi writes Google has announced changes to its search engine in an attempt to curb online piracy. The company has long been criticised for enabling people to find sites to download entertainment illegally. The entertainment industry has argued that illegal sites should be "demoted" in search results. The new measures, mostly welcomed by music trade group the BPI, will instead point users towards legal alternatives such as Spotify and Google Play. Google will now list these legal services in a box at the top of the search results, as well as in a box on the right-hand side of the page. Crucially, however, these will be adverts — meaning if legal sites want to appear there, they will need to pay Google for the placement.
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Really? Troll?
Stuff like this [wikipedia.org] is one area where commercial companies are providing a lower quality of service. If you provide better service than the pirates, purchasing suddenly becomes a much more attractive option.
Myself, I either prefer to pay an artist directly, go see a show, or listen to Pandora or the radio. Purchasing DRM'd music isn't on my todo list.
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No, in order to be a troll, I'd need to be aiming at eliciting negative responses AND not believe what I'm saying. Neither was my intent. You may not like my language, but it's certainly not a troll. I had a legitimate point to make, and I made it.
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Your comment wasn't a troll at all. Sorry to see the ignorant have mod points yet again.
Is Google Losing It? (Score:3, Interesting)
The more I see this kind of stuff about Google being forced to modify search results based on dumb things like 'right to be forgotten' the more I can't help but feel that Google's results just might not be reliable enough anymore. I know that right to be forgotten is only a European thing but I still can't help but get the feeling that I am no longer getting the best results for my search.
Although it brings bile to the back of my throat I think it may be time to see how Bing lines up against Google.
Re:Is Google Losing It? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what makes you thing Bing doesn't have to obey EU laws when it does business in the EU [searchengineland.com]? The situation with Bing could in fact be even more dire than with Google. Duckduckgo will be closer to the real thing.
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Finally some judge understands how the internet works, and now you complain that he has.
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Yep, the judge understands that the internet is global but he has totally forgotten how international law works. You cannot prevent a company from doing something outside of your borders just because it is illegal inside your borders. What if China decided that if Google wanted a Chinese presence they had to filter all results for all users globally? How is that any different other than the subject matter being blocked?
Re:Is Google Losing It? (Score:4, Interesting)
China really wants to be able to do this. Whenever you see UN statements about taking control of the Internet away from the US and putting it in the hands of a UN committee, what they really mean is "We want China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc to be able to say 'This website violates our laws so it must be removed from The Internet even though it is located outside our borders."
This isn't to say that US control is a great thing, but when you get into a "lesser of two evils" choice of US or UN (i.e. China/Iran/etc) control, I'll pick US control every time.
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China already could do this. Likely Google would decide in that case that it simply wasn't worth having a presence in China and China apparently doesn't care or doesn't think the trade-off is worth it.
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S/could do/does/.
Google only has a presence in Hong Kong; it has no presence in Mainland China. The two already went through this in the past. Eventually, with the way things currently look in HK, we'll likely see Google vanish from HK as well.
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How would this work exactly? Should I be arrested for drug charges if I smoke pot while visiting Amsterdam? Should I be arrested upon entering Iran for drawing a picture of Mohamed while in the UK?
Extradition has rules and requirements, one of which is that the charges being extradited for have to be valid in both countries.
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Re:Is Google Losing It? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google isn't modifying their search results.
They're adding advertisements for legitimate content at the top of searches and on the side... For a price.
It's brilliant. I love you Google.
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Just like the other search engines were doing when we all decided we liked Google more. What goes around comes around.
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Google isn't modifying their search results.
Yes, they are. According to OP, they'll be putting what THEY deem to be "legitimate" sites at the top. And asking for pay to be listed as "legitimate".
If that isn't "modifying search results" for money, I don't know what is.
Google just found a new way to be evil.
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Google doesn't really change anything. They just check the ads against a supplied list of providers that bought the searched content and won't place an add for a site that hasn't legally got the content.
Just like now. The illegal content providers didn't pay for ads anyway.
It's genius!
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Google doesn't really change anything.
YES, they ARE! It's a search engine. Changing the order of the search results changes EVERYTHING.
And by their own admission, they're doing based on [A] payment, and [B] their subjective perception of whether the content is real.
I repeat: that *IS* modifying search results, and they're doing it for money.
When I search, I'm not searching for the highest bidder.
This is why I am using Google less and less now. I have actually started using Bing (which in some ways isn't much better), and I'm giving
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They ALREADY put ads on top. They have for years. This is the same. They just check the ads against that list (which doesn't change anything because the illegal content providers don't have the money to pay for the ads.
Now you may argue that the ads are wrong. OK. That is arguable. But that is a different discussion.
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They ALREADY put ads on top. They have for years.
No shit, Sherlock. Figured that out, did you?
This is the same.
No, this is NOT the same. The ads they put at the top are separated from the rest of the search results, and clearly marked (as required by law... at least it is for newspapers) as advertisements or "sponsored" content.
This is different. The claim is that they will rearrange based on some subjective measure of the "legitimacy" of the content. That is not the same at all. It's not just advertising, it's changing your search results according to endorsement by G
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They ALREADY put ads on top. They have for years.
No shit, Sherlock. Figured that out, did you?
What I haven't figured out yet is why you seem to have that figured out but you still argue like this changes anything. It doesn't.
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What I haven't figured out yet is why you seem to have that figured out but you still argue like this changes anything.
Yes, this much is obvious.
Control of visibility of product ads (Score:2)
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Don't you think Bing is doing the same?
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If they're highlighting Google Play then I can see a new anti-trust investigation in the near future.
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It doesn't sound like Google is being "forced". It sounds like Google found some companies willing to cough up a bunch of money to be promoted when the user searches for online music/video [not that Google Play will have to pay, but they needed another company to pay so Play could also be promoted, otherwise it's more of pushing their services over competitors].
Derivative works (Score:3)
The amount of corrupt stuff they have done over the years is shocking. That includes [...] suing INDIES FOR RELEASING THEIR OWN STUFF FOR FREE.
Perhaps the indies being sued are producing work that's derivative of or otherwise substantially similar to one or more works whose copyright is owned by a major incumbent publisher. This is especially likely in music, where it can be proven that there are only about 105 million possible distinct musical hooks. (Want me to clarify?)
google is a search engine (Score:2, Interesting)
And if it exists on the web, google should be able to find it.
By all means, go after (Via legal methods) sites hosting content illegally, but stop fskering with my search results. Half the damn web is now unsearchable for one reason or another.
Time to look at distributed, un-censurable search tech?
Re:google is a search engine (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is not an agnostic search system. Google is the king of search, and everyone is trying to hack around their algorithms to boost their search rankings. Is it really so terrible that Google itself should be outright asked to prefer search results that are "better for society"?
Don't get me wrong. I want a truly agnostic search engine. Badly. I want to be able to find the best source for what I'm looking for, not a couple dozen support forums with great SEO and an actual honest-to-goodness answer buried on page 47 of the search results. Google used to be the closest we could get to that, but that was a long time ago. Now they're basically a public utility, much like the internet itself. Although since so many people are stealing from it and its customers, I'd say it's more like cable TV.
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You seem to be contradicting yourself, so may I ask what's your point? That you personally want something from Google that (in your opinion) is bad for society?
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Notice the air quotes around "better for society". I would rather avoid discussing whether that's true, because that discussion is happening elsewhere.
What I want is a a "truly agnostic search engine". That would mean nobody can mess with the search results, not by law and not by hacking. Perhaps I didn't make this clear, but I don't expect Google will ever be that again.
I feel like musing a bit on what would satisfy this desire. There are a few problems with search results: 1) They lack context; 2) They ar
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Who gets to decide what is "better for society"? Also, do these decisions happen on a country-by-country basis without affecting other countries? Because I'm sure China would love to censor search results world-wide for "the good of society." I'm also sure that the RIAA would love to make sure that their member organizations get more Google ranking than Indie labels for "the better
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Society does. Society makes laws, and people are expected to follow those laws, whether or not they believe in them personally, or face the consequences. If they disagree, they should get the laws changed, and not simply break them.
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Who gets to decide what is "better for society"?
Society does.
This. Notice my "scare quotes" [wikipedia.org] around "better for society". mattack2 has hit on the head exactly what I would have said if it wouldn't have distracted from my point. There's no way to perfectly determine what is best for society, but we do have mostly-good-most-of-the-time ways.
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Same reasoning behind doing things like removing ext3 support in chrome.
Why would a web browser have ext3 support in the first place? Are you one of those people that like to make everything confusing by dropping random words from otherwise meaningful statements? Like "Free as in [Free] Beer"? Um, does that mean freedom because beer is liberating? Well, don't "let the cat out [of the bag]" on that one. It might bring home a mouse. Anyway, maybe I shouldn't "judge a book [by its cover]". As in, never judge a book, ever, for any reason, because clearly your English is better than
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Fortunately The Pirate Bay has its own search function. As have most other torrent and warez sites.
So really what's happening is that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good on you Google for exploiting this for profit. 'Murika!
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Yes, a browser plugin that removes the first boxed ad results would be sufficient (for now).
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You mean something like adblock? I haven't see ads in gogle for quite some time.
Re:So really what's happening is that... (Score:5, Interesting)
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What I want to know is: If a piracy site wants to pay to place their ads in this box, will Google allow it?
Probably, but I guess those on the anti-piracy side figure they'll now have more of a paper trail to follow to find and deal with those paying to get those ads up.
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Piracy stopped being about morality long, long ago. It's about profit and nothing but profit.
Google is merely doing the same. In fact it makes perfect sense considering their main business model.
Also, debating the morality of an advertisement company?
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Seems reasonable. How else is Google supposed to know the difference between honest content providers and those dirty pirates?
The whole DMCA takedown debacle shows us that you clearly can't take someones word that they're a copyright owner; they frequently lie about it. But we've been told time and time again that those dirty pirates expect everything for free, so you'd expect that charging money for listing
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Yes, I'm also switching to more privacy-friendly search engines. It can go quickly - remember AltaVista when Google came up?
That new search engine has to be in a free country however. The US gives in too quickly when bribes, I mean campaign money, is offered by media companies.
Do the Right Thing (Score:2)
alternatives (Score:1)
"legal alternatives" to torrents reminds me abstinence-only sex education where they list "healthy alternatives" to sex for teens. Bake a cake together! Go on romantic walk on the beach! Have a pillow fight!
Re:alternatives (Score:4, Funny)
1. Bake a cake together
2. Go for a romantic walk
3. Have a pillow fight
4. Shag like animals
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Good grief. "Abstinence-only sex education" is like swimming lessons where they teach nothing but how to stay out of the water.
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Certainly, sex education where you figuratively got into the water and taught how to do the various strokes would have been a lot more fun.
And if no legal option exists? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or rather, you should cough up the cash to purchase current legal offerings that are similar
Until the copyright owner of the original successfully sues anyone else who produces something similar.
How does it promote progress? (Score:2)
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I've got Song of the South, on one of my hard drives somewhere. I downloaded it a few years a go and kept it. Try the torrents, particularly in Spain.
Briar Rabbit Rocks...
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Yeah, they should not change a thing because 0.03% of the population needs their NES games or other form of entertainment nobody cares for.
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It would not be the end of the world. I'm sure you could easily find some other entertainment.
And guess what: the situation of the 8-bit ROMs not being available on every warez site might actually encourage the copyright holders to republish them as part of retro compilations by legal means.
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You do know that the only reason that copyright holders are re-releasing as retro games, is that the success of the warez sites have showned to those thick headed copyright holders that there is a market for it.
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If MPAA is a problem, then stop buying MPAA movies.
But is there a viable alternative? I thought U.S. theater chains had a policy of showing only movies rated by MPAA. And I thought all free-to-air television that isn't PBS was MPAA. (NBC shares a corporate parent with Universal, ABC with Disney, CBS with Paramount, and Fox with, well, Last Century Fox.)
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Yeah, Good Luck with That (TM) (Score:5, Insightful)
When "piracy" became hijacked from meaning the naval context, copying was rampant. In the 80's as kids we couldn't afford all the games so we (illegally) shared them. Hell, I got into computers simply because it was a fun challenge to "krack" software. In the 90's In college/university we used BBS's, FSP (how many know about _that_ protocol!!), FTP with hidden directories containing control characters, IRC with XDCC, binary newsgroup with split .RARs., in 2000's we used Torrents and/or P2P such as Emule, etc. It wasn't until years later did we learn that piracy = lack of respect for the author's distribution. As adults we buy things because we want to support the author(s) to produce more. And if it is crap we vote with our wallet -- and tell others to not buy it.
What is kind of ironic and completely counter-intuitive is that those who pirate tend to spend more but that is a discussion for another day. (Part of the problem is that certain "assets" are not even available to be legally purchased, etc.)
IMHO Piracy begins AND ends with education. Futurama's Bender made fun of this "archaic philosophy" that "Sharing is illegal" by joking "You wouldn't steal X, right? Or would I !" [youtube.com] meme along with the popular "You wouldn't download car?" Because most people are able to separate the issue from money vs freedom. i.e. Artists want to share their creations. Consumers want to share those same creations -- that is what culture does -- preserves "popular" art in whatever medium. Unfortunately the context behind those same reason's don't always sync up. You have bands like The Who who don't care about "bootlegging"; other sellout bands like Metallica that only care about the money and could care less if fans help "market" the band.
Kids these day's aren't stupid. They are questing the status quo that: "Why is illegal sharing illegal? Because of arbitrary financial reasons??" id software created the shareware model -- give part of the game away for free, customers can spend money to buy the rest. These days Humble Bundles let people pay what they want. IMHO this is the correct way to do things. Compromise between 2 conflicting ideals. Open Source or Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] is another approach.
Google making it harder to find digital goods is not going to change a dam thing. Google wasn't around when we were kids and piracy was rampant. Removing a search engine will only drive the process back underground when it peaked with The Pirate Bay in the mid 2000's.
Piracy has existed since the beginning of the network. Any technological means to try to remove it is like pissing in the ocean. Yeah good luck with that !
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The vast majority of piracy is a necessity for the majority of the world's population. In most parts of the world a student cannot even afford half of the textbooks he needs and certainly cannot afford to buy video games for 60 USD each. Modern economy spends billions on advertising to create artificial demands, so it is not suprising that people who cannot afford all these shiny things copy them if they have the opportunity.
When I was a poor student many years ago (in the 90s), I pirated everything, every
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Piracy has been used to mean copyright infringement since the 1700s.
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FSP (how many know about _that_ protocol!!)
I remember FSP. You'd set it going on a file, log out, go on holiday for a couple of weeks, survive a nuclear war that reduces man back to the stone age, rebuild society and rediscover lost technology, rebuild the internet, and FSP would start downloading it again as if nothing had happened. Slow as hell, but you couldn't kill it with a bad connection.
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Incorrect.
As a kid for the longest time I couldn't see or reason how simply copying a number* was illegal.
* Where on the Apple ][ //e this number was 2 nibbles / byte * 256 bytes * 16 sectors * 34 tracks = 278, 528 hex digits.
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It was peer pressure. Sure, you start with a C-15 but before you know it, you're on to C-60s and then it's not long before even a C-90 just isn't doing it anymore. It's only when you catch yourself writing out the third page of play codes that you know you've hit rock bottom.
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Re:Yeah, Good Luck with That (TM) (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. The dirty secret of Copyright is that it was invented by --> Publishers <-- to maintain control by preventing other publishers from making a profit !!
I've posted about this in the past ...
and
and
and
History of Copyright Law [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yeah, Good Luck with That (TM) (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time, there was a very good reason for Copyright. I'd argue that the same reason still exists. If we didn't have copyright, what would stop someone from taking some big content item (be it a movie, book, song, etc), repackaging it (ripping the song and burning it to DVD, scanning the book and reprinting it, etc) and selling it without giving the creator any money? Creators could find that their hard work yields someone else getting rich while their copies don't sell.
The big problem with copyright isn't that it exists, but the length. When copyright was 14 years plus a one-time, optional 14 year renewal, it was fine. Under that system, an item released in 2014 would enter Public Domain in 2042 (assuming renewal took place). Under the current system, that same item would enter Public Domain in 2134 (assuming the author doesn't die before 2039 and that copyright terms aren't lengthened more). The former system means that I could enjoy something and live to see it enter Public Domain. The latter system ensures I won't live to see this happen. This effectively kills Public Domain and destroys the balance that we had with copyright: Limited monopoly granted over the work in return for giving it back to the Public Domain when the copyright expired.
If we put copyrights back to a 14 year + 14 year one-time renewal system, many of the problems with Copyright would go away.
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Yes, the ridiculous length is indeed a problem.
The "evils" of copyright was debated back in 1841 !!
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/... [kuro5hin.org]
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If we didn't have copyright, what would stop someone from taking some big content item (be it a movie, book, song, etc), repackaging it (ripping the song and burning it to DVD, scanning the book and reprinting it, etc) and selling it without giving the creator any money?
Uh, even though copyright exists, this is happening.
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Yes, but there is legal recourse for the creator when this happens. If you toss out copyright, then anyone can do this with impunity. And if you think this will hurt the big companies, think again. Who do you think will do this more than anyone if copyright is tossed out the window? If you make an indie film, you'll find it suddenly "re-released" by a dozen movie companies all hoping to make a buck off of it without giving anything back to you.
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Imagine if we abolished copyright tomorrow and Walmart could stock Walmart-brand DVDs of all TV shows/movies. Plus, a Walmart streaming service where all of your favorite shows/movies could be viewed for half the monthly price of Netflix. Of course, none of the money would go to the people who actually made the shows. Just to Walmart. And it would be priced intentionally low so that it would make financial sense for people to buy them from Walmart and not from anyone else. (Just like how Walmart does t
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Plus, a Walmart streaming service where all of your favorite shows/movies could be viewed for half the monthly price of Netflix. Of course, none of the money would go to the people who actually made the shows. Just to Walmart. And it would be priced intentionally low so that it would make financial sense for people to buy them from Walmart and not from anyone else. (Just like how Walmart does to other stores when they open up.)
Unless Walmart has some magical way to get all new movies before they are released, people will get them from the creators first; and if there's no DRM on there, they'd have no reason to re-buy them from Walmart. What would happen is that some popular creators would sign deals with Walmart, saying that they give all new content to Walmart. But then once Walmart releases them, they'd be put up on torrent sites and such.
And even if it did turn out the way you say, why would that be bad? That would encourag
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Yay! (Score:2)
Let's just hope you can filter for those legal sites.
wrong headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Monetizes 'To Fight Piracy' By Charging Legal Sites
Fixed that for you
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This is a good thing. Private companies unrelated to piracy should not have to foot the bill for implementing the hopes and dreams of another company.
Gasp (Score:1)
The worlds most profitable advertising company has agreed to sell advertisements? Color me shocked.
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Cats and dogs living together!
Great idea (Score:3)
no more - THX (Score:1)
Out of Google's dictionary: (Score:2)
Tested (Score:3)
The rest produced a bunch of bootleg organic results and no ads:
There are illegal sites?!?! (Score:1)
Why are google even indexing them if they are "illegal"?
Huh (Score:2)
If they can tell legal from non-legal, why do they even show the illegal stuff?
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They should index them because it isn't the job of a search engine to censor the internet. If the site is illegal, it is the job of legal authorities to take it off line. It is a dangerous road to take to let Google edit what content is findable. I want a free and open internet, not the internet according to Google. How long before they start taking suggestions from the government about hiding anything they don't want you to see? After year years of consolidation in search our options are Google, Bing and a
Impressively smart move, indeed... (Score:2)
I heard it yesterday on TV.
I was thrown aback by such an incredibly smart and useful move. Impressive.
Now instead of googlig for "free porn pictures to download" we will have to actually type in "www,thepiratebay.info" or "www.torrentz.com"... this will no doubt deter so many people that it will render all the P2P networks useless.
Google = Evil geniuses!!