Publisher Is Pretty Sure Google Could End Piracy (techdirt.com) 216
An anonymous reader writes: Techdirt is running a story about Square One Publishers Rudy Shur, and his confusion over the DMCA process, and exactly what Google has control over. The story goes: "After being contacted by Google Play with an offer to join the team, Shur took it upon himself to fire off an angry email in response. That would have been fine, but he somehow convinced Publisher's Weekly to print both the letter and some additional commentary. Presumably, his position at a publishing house outweighed Publisher Weekly's better judgment, because everything about his email/commentary is not just wrong, but breathtakingly so.
After turning down the offer to join Google Play (Shur's previous participation hadn't really shown it to be an advantageous relationship), Shur decided to play internet detective. Starting with this paragraph, Shur's arguments head downhill then off a cliff then burst into flames then the flaming wreckage slides down another hill and off another cliff. (h/t The Digital Reader) '[W]e did discover, however, was that Google has no problem allowing other e-book websites to illegally offer a number of our e-book titles, either free or at reduced rates, to anyone on the Internet.'
There's a huge difference between "allowing" and "things that happen concurrently with Google's existence." Shur cannot recognize this difference, which is why he's so shocked Google won't immediately fix it. 'When we alerted Google, all we got back was an email telling us that Google has no responsibility and that it is up to us to contact these sites to tell them to stop giving away or selling our titles.'"
After turning down the offer to join Google Play (Shur's previous participation hadn't really shown it to be an advantageous relationship), Shur decided to play internet detective. Starting with this paragraph, Shur's arguments head downhill then off a cliff then burst into flames then the flaming wreckage slides down another hill and off another cliff. (h/t The Digital Reader) '[W]e did discover, however, was that Google has no problem allowing other e-book websites to illegally offer a number of our e-book titles, either free or at reduced rates, to anyone on the Internet.'
There's a huge difference between "allowing" and "things that happen concurrently with Google's existence." Shur cannot recognize this difference, which is why he's so shocked Google won't immediately fix it. 'When we alerted Google, all we got back was an email telling us that Google has no responsibility and that it is up to us to contact these sites to tell them to stop giving away or selling our titles.'"
The elders of the internet (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The elders of the internet (Score:5, Funny)
If Google can't control what people post on the Internet, Bill Gates should be able to block them from the Internet entirely. This guy should talk to Bill Gates, and say that Donald Trump sent him!
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It's Google's Internet, we just live in it.
I remember back in the '90s on the Mac, when you installed Internet Explorer, it put it in a folder called "Microsoft Internet." So it used to be Microsoft's Internet, but now it's Google's.
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But the Google is emperor of the internet! Everynoob knows this to be true.
To be fair, a lot of people have no idea how the Internet works. A few years ago I sat down with my elderly mother for about an hour to explain what was actually happening when she connected to the Internet and clicked on a link. At my previous job one project manager didn't understand how I could put servers that were located in our office "on the Internet". This Mr. Shur should have been more informed before he fired off this letter. But to many people, our modern technological world might as well be
Internet == phone; server == answering machine (Score:2)
At my previous job one project manager didn't understand how I could put servers that were located in our office "on the Internet".
"The Internet is like the telephone network. If you have a phone line running to an answering machine in your office, the answering machine will accept calls from someone across town or across the country. Likewise, a server in your office can accept connections over an Internet line."
Did you use an analogy like that? If so, how did your project manager take it?
But to many people, our modern technological world might as well be magic.
That's why Jesus of Nazareth taught with analogies: people understand them.
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"The Internet is like the telephone network. If you have a phone line running to an answering machine in your office, the answering machine will accept calls from someone across town or across the country. Likewise, a server in your office can accept connections over an Internet line."
Did you use an analogy like that? If so, how did your project manager take it?
Yeah, something like that. I said something like, "Our whole office is technically on the Internet. The same way we can send and receive email, people can be sent to our server when they request our website. He got it, he just hadn't thought it through.
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Perhaps the boss thought Internet was directional, such that requests go one way and responses go the other. Asymmetric-rate connections might lead one to believe that, with the phone analog being payphones that don't take incoming calls. And in the era of IPv4 address exhaustion, so might carrier-grade NAT.
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Well, if you didn't have a truck coming by periodically to take your content to the nearest tube, I guess I can understand it.
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I'm constantly amazed that people no longer seem to understand what a search engine is, or how it works. Even governments, such as the European Union, who presumably have people on the payroll to explain these things to them, seem to think Google = The Internet itself.
Of course, Google doesn't help itself when it manipulates search results for its own purposes. Once you've started down that road, you can no longer pretend to be merely a neutral indexer of the web.
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I think I heard that they already do dowrank piracy. You get results when you are obviously searching for piracy, but otherwise you don't. Example: Typing in, simply, a movie title will never get you piracy results.
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You're right there's no obvious simple solution, but I'm still surprised Google hasn't solved it: I see no reason for it to be impossible, or beyond the expertise of Google. Well, except that there might simply not exist any better matches on the web, in which case their current results make some sense.
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What on Earth are you talking about? AC and I were talking about why Google search results include copy-spam. Did you reply to the wrong comment?
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Yup. I remember when AltaVista was the big dog, and then Google came and ate their lunch. There's nothing keeping the same thing from happening to Google except their own efforts.
Re:The elders of the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think it would be really interesting if google actually did something like this because:
I'm not actually sure any abuse from pro-copyright groups would be able to outweigh legitimate opposition.
Google probably wouldn't stand for blatant abuse from pro-copyright groups on a system like this (web search is their bread and butter, youtube is not)
Obviously it would be bad for google because regardless of how well it works in favour of either side of the debate, it will further cast google as a censor of the w
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oh yeah, I'd definitely mark microsoft.com, sony.com, apple.com, ford.com, etc., as spam. OTOH, google would just white list its friends so it wouldn't actually have any effect. But minor sites with unapproved content (and I do *not* mean piracy) would get slammed into oblivion by a network of reporting by interested parties (microsoft, sony, apple, ford, etc.).
The suggestion amounts to anonymous internet voting, one of the most trivially gamed systems ever thought up. The most obvious cheating is easy to d
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and there's a huge potential for abuse (if such a button existed, I bet a lot of us would click on it for sony.com and so on).
That's not "abuse", that's a public service.
Re:The elders of the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
But Google has a financial incentive not to. Why? Because people want to see the pages that give them free stuff. DUH. And if Google doesn't give them, they will turn away from Google and to the next search engine. And that is certainly the LAST thing Google would want.
And I would not rely on law makers to step in here. Because their incentive to have US businesses lose business to foreign ones isn't too high either. Because people can VERY easily jump ship on this one. If the word gets out that Google doesn't give you the results you're looking for anymore and, say, Yandex does, well, to hell with the US, hello Russia.
Why should real people care more about the country they live in than corporations?
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I consider my taxes an investment in social peace. So yes, I can agree with this.
I prefer to buy domestic, though. For the same reason. First, I don't think that we gain anything from transporting stuff halfway around the globe. It's wasteful. Second, I want people here to have a job. For the same reason I pay taxes. It is better for the personal image people have of themselves if they work for a living than accepting government handouts. At least I would feel better if I know I earned the money I have inst
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There is no 'best' way to spamfilter bad emails. The definition of spam is unknown and being redefined constantly by spamfilters (which is a little different from what recipients think spam is).
The problem is that the process of 'what is spam' is quite complex for humans. For instance: Suppose I gave you permission to send me bulkmail and you only start to use it two years later. Is that spam? For one person it isn't, for the other it is.
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Unlikely. Any block of the type you indicate would also block the legitimate sources of the media as well.
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Gmail does a fantastic job removing Spam.
And legitimate e-mail. Anyone who has ever been Joe-jobbed will find that their legitimate, even personal e-mail ending up in G-Mail's spam trap. Forever.
Any solution that punishes innocents through false positives is not a solution, whether it's flagging e-mails, web sites, or suspiciously looking individuals.
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They don't control Firefox. Also, they don't control search either. DDG is my default, over which Google has no say in what gets shown.
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That doesn't work.
The same book is often published by different publishers in different markets.
If the US publisher gives Google a list of 'approved' resellers, Google would potentially block all the legal resellers for the UK, Australian etc. markets.
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Besides, that's a good way for Google to eventually work its way into irrelevancy. Once people find out that they can't use Google to find what they're looking for, they might be tempted to try other search engines (*cough* Duck Duck Go *cough). That movement would start out as very small and insignificant but if it persisted, especially with kids and teens, word of mouth alone could seriously cut into Google's user base. A situation I'm sure they're aware of and trying to dance around.
This is already ha
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I have had to take to checking the robots.txt on websites I want to search myself many many websites today still have
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
You know what that means? It means only google is allowed to crawl the website. That mean's ddg.gg and any other search engine that respects robots.txt won't be able to search it.
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I have three distinct books titled "What If?". I have two distinct books with the same title from the same author, different publisher.
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Not to mention bookstore websites like Amazon.
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Not to mention bookstore websites like Amazon.
Or second hand sellers. Whether private or commercial.
Last I checked, "first sale" was still a valid doctrine.
Asking Google to police each and every one of the billions of web pages they index for suspicious content is like demanding the Mall of America and Disney Land run background checks on every visitor, so a criminal doesn't sneak in. Just orders of magnitude more ridiculous.
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Very few Youtube blocks are actually inaccurate. Did you know that using a song, that you haven't gained permission for, as background for your video is still copyright infringement? It seems that many video uploaders have a serious lack of understanding of how copyright works.
If you are the original source for the music or video, including all audio, then and only then is the block completely wrong. If you gain permission from the publisher/author/singer to use their music or video in your video, then t
How should a YouTube producer get a sync license? (Score:2)
Did you know that using a song, that you haven't gained permission for, as background for your video is still copyright infringement?
Let's say I, as a video producer, want to go about this the legit way. I would need to obtain a sync license from the song's publisher and then either commission a cover version or obtain a master license from a record label. So once I have identified a song's publisher, how should I go about approaching this publisher for a sync license?
Or let's say I want to go about this a different way by writing my own music for the video instead. But there have been several notable cases of accidental infringement, su
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Protip setup an email that's not easily guessed and disable the spam filter. Seriously if anyone contacts you at
492048415445205350414d2049205245414c4c592048415445205350414d2f2e@gmail.com
Its because you gave them the address no one is going to guess that!
Need an easy to type one for mailing lists? Try something like sendspamhere@gmail.com although be aware you will get so many emails a day that if someone actually does message you you won't be able to find it.
What in the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
Could someone explain the summary in plain English?
It sounds like something bad happened to someone important but other than that I have absolutely no idea what it is saying.
Re:What in the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
Could someone explain the summary in plain English?
Crybaby publisher is scapegoating Google for for unauthorized distribution of works.
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The guy seems to confuse patent and copyright law by blaming Google for making a distinction between the two.
Did the guy ever wonder why there are separate laws here?
As an added bonus, he says Google is evil for only going after infringements of their own patents, and not his copyrights.
Is he implying that Google should knowingly misrepresent itself as copyright owner of somebody else's work?
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That's entirely different.
YouTube is hosting content, and they don't simply throw up their arms at all: they provide ample tools for rights holders to file DCMA claims and promptly disable content that is claimed, according to the obligations the DCMA sets upon them.
There is actually an opposite problem with Youtube: they accept dubious and wrong claims, which sucks, but from their POV they have to -- if someone puts in an incorrect DCMA claim on penalty of perjury, its on them in a court of law. But Google
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if someone puts in an incorrect DCMA claim on penalty of perjury, its on them in a court of law
As I understand it, this is incorrect, and is actually one of the most significant issues with DMCA.
The original claim has no penalties on it whatsoever; the claimant isn't on the line for anything and can lie and cheat without a worry.
The receiver of the claim has to act as the claim tells.
The person whose video is taken down can file a counterclaim.
The claimant can then take action against the counterclaim, only at this point is there any risk of penalty of perjury for the claimant.
Re: What in the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
There is one point in the DMCA claim that is given under penalty of perjury: The submitter of the claim must attest that they are the copyright holder, or empowered to act on behalf of the copyright holder, of the work in question. That part of the claim is given under penalty of perjury.
There is, though, no requirement that the rest of the claim be accurate. This is intentional: It was expected from the very beginning that some level of automation would be required, so there was always the risk infringement would be mistakenly identified and a takedown sent where no infringement actually took place. That's why the counternotice procedure is also included. The sheer scale on which the DMCA would eventually be used was not anticipated though. The internet was a small place in 1998.
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As I understand it, you only need to claim under penalty of perjury that you own some copyright or another, for example your highschool essay. Then you can cheerfully claim that you believe a movie that predates your essay is infringing.
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No, that's not true.
By making a DCMA claim, you're attesting under penalty of perjury that you own a right to whats being copied, or represent a rights holder, or otherwise have a right to make a claim. That's actionable if untrue. Just because its not usually acted upon -- that's a sad state of the imbalance of our legal system -- not the lack of a cause of action.
Now it requires someone else to actually fight it before it goes anywhere, and most DCMA claims end up in a kind of internet oblivion, but to ma
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The DMCA takedown process doesn't require proving a negative. It's a safe-harbor process. If the host takes down whatever gets a DMCA complaint, it's not liable to the complainer for hosting the whatever, and if the host allows a DMCA counter-claim it isn't liable to whoever put the whatever up. Thing is, most whatevers are on free sites, which have rules like "We can take down anything for any reason". There normally isn't a contract because there's no consideration, and hence no liability. If you've
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If you want to require Google to preview all videos before uploading them, you're going to also have to require all websites to preview everything users upload - including comments. How does Slashdot know that this comment of mine isn't copyrighted by someone else? Maybe I'm taking their words and posting them here without the copyright owner's permission. Should Slashdot preview all comments before allowing them to be posted? How would the Slashdot editors know whether this comment is from a copyrighte
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Your mother must have huffed a lot of paint when she was carrying you, because you truly are a stupid individual.
I would strongly encourage you to look up how much video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Then think about the sheer number of people that Google would need to hire to review this. (Basic math can be used to calculate this, think you can handle that?)
Then go stand in front of a mirror and repeat 5 times "I will not say moronic, ridiculous things on the internet anymore".
Moron.
Yes, but at volume of material is a consequence of YouTube's business model. Before you accuse anyone of stupidity or being a moron, have a think about things.
YouTube is a very interesting example of the difficulties with safe harbor laws. Safe harbor basically says that YouTube isn't a publisher. If it's not a publisher, what is it? It must be a printer. And a printing company can't be expected to check everything a publisher submits, can it? But YouTube looks a lot like a publisher to me, with layout, b
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I didn't ask you to do the maths, and I didn't demand anything.
I will restate what I said in brief: 1) The volume of material that YouTube receives is part of, and a result of, their business model. 2) YouTube looks and acts like a publisher in very many ways.
If you cannot discuss these points like a rational human being, then please stop accusing others of being "moronic".
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But, Youtube has no reason, or financial incentive to be the copyright police. They have no reason to preemptively filter anything, nor should they, as it isn't their problem.
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This dude that's a publisher is pissed over getting spammed by Google and the fact that Google indexes websites that give away IP he's (or his clients) got the rights to.
So he publishes this diatribe on his website and somehow got it published here also.
No nerd news here...
Re:What in the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
The TL;DR of the summary of the rant is that somebody in a tiny position of power doesn't understand the internet.
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tl;dr version: Some old geezer mistook the service that distributes street numbers for the guys running the crack house.
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It's true -- Google could hire some censors, thereby increasing its costs, increase their liability, piss off its customers, reduce ad revenue, and reduce marketshare. Oddly enough, they have elected not to do so. (Also, it would have had a minimal effect on piracy)
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Re:What in the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
Could someone explain the summary in plain English?
It sounds like something bad happened to someone important but other than that I have absolutely no idea what it is saying.
Well, your initial supposition is wrong first off. Some guy who thinks he's important blames Google for the actions of people that are not under their control. It's like blaming crowbar manufacturers for people using crowbars to break into houses.
His business model is unable to adjust to the fact that his product is easily pirated, and he's blaming the most visible company connected to the Internet for other people pirating his works, without taking into account Google has no control over anyone but themselves, they are not the only search engine in the world, they only index the WWW portion of the Internet which has many other protocols that files can be shared over. He's tilting at windmills.
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Bennett Hasleton started posting anonymously. That's really all you need to know about this post.
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And that person is the author of the very deliberately misleading (quoting out of context) and biased summary.
If you read the actual linked-to editorial, it's clear that he does in fact understand Google's role. From the original editorial:
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> it's clear that he does in fact understand Google's role.
No, he clearly doesn't, and your quote only reinforces that.
Google's role in this is akin to the Yellow Pages. Let's say "A1 American Pawn" has an ad in the Yellow Pages (first listing, in fact) and they are caught selling some of this guy's stolen stuff. They sold a lot of stolen stuff and bought a bigger ad.
If this guy told the Yellow Pages they had a responsibility to remove this guy's ad, reduce the size of it, move it farther down the listin
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It is less clear when the ad states "free ebooks here", as the site may have every right to post the ebooks for free. Google isn't the police, it is not their responsibility to police the internet trying to find every pirate. It is the publisher's responsibility to contact the web site with a DMCA, if they ignore it and don't delist the book, then you move up to their ISP, if they don't, you move up to their Peering providers. You could also sue the person who runs the web site with a lawyer to speed up
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No, I'm pretty sure the first amendment does not protect witnessing, in plain sight, solicitation to commit actual crimes.
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If a store sells knockoff designer handbags, why is it okay for police to come in, confiscate the illegal merchandise, and arrest and fine the store owners? It's because the store is profiting from the sales of these illegal goods, in the same way Google can increase its advertising rates because these illegal sites increase the number of users it attracts.
Interesting concept...
So if I sell a drug that doesn't work and I use television to advertise my drug, it's the fault of everyone who advertised my drug?
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So if I sell a drug that doesn't work and I use television to advertise my drug, it's the fault of everyone who advertised my drug?
If the advertisers knew or should have known that the drugs were fake, then yes, it's the advertiser's fault too. Same with Google.
IP means imperfect parallels (Score:2)
Said idiots might justify the term "intellectual property" because aspects of these exclusive rights do have analogs to one another and to real property. For example, nominative use of a trademark and fair use of a copyrighted work can be compared to easements on real estate. The scenes a faire doctrine in copyright is analogous to prior art in patent and genericide in trademark, which in turn is analogous to a lesser extent to laches in patent and copyright. This introduces perhaps the most accurate expans
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Has Google already removed the offending site from its own search index (with the typical Lumen notice at the bottom of the first page of results) and advertising platform?
Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
I've to say, with Square One Titles on Health [squareonepublishers.com] like Cancer: A Second Opinion [squareonepublishers.com], I can only presume that Rudy Shur believes that Square One should be, by extension, guilty of any wrongful death suit that occurs by following the advice given in the books that delay treatments that might otherwise save lives. Because as a publisher of such material, Square One is under a lot more control over what goes into the books they publish that Google has on what content is published by others, even if they're admittedly less than dutiful when it comes to preemptively scrubbing ilegally copyrighted material from the web or otherwise investigating and responding to publisher allegations of such things.
I mean, seriously, do you really want to be casting stones?
Re:Liability (Score:5, Insightful)
We should start contacting the pirates too and making sure they know not to distribute this trash. It doesn't deserve to be read at all.
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Google is the internet! (Score:3)
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I wonder is Microsoft/IE did/does get contacted by people telling them to take things off the Internet.
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It would be hilarious if MS "complied" by sending the requestor an automated update that removed Internet functionality from all Windows based systems on their network.
Summarize The Article (Score:5, Insightful)
Just summarize the article. We don't need to be told what to think by some anon
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What the? Are you trying to tell me you don't read Slashdot just for the commentary?
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Anon in this case looks a whole lot like Bennett Hasltons ignorant rambling ...
Actually, the behavior it's describing also sounds a lot like Bennett.
20 Euro says he wrote it.
Mow my lawn (Score:2)
I can find you and your crap company on the interweb, so you owe me. DO SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT'S BUGGING ME!!!
Conversely Mr. Shur, pull you head out of you ass and enter the 21st century. Other wise shut the fuck up and leave those of us who have consciousnesses and cognitive abilities to get on with things.
Summary (Score:2)
Guy goes on date with Pamela Handerson ends up with face palm disease.
Oh for chrissakes... (Score:5, Informative)
1: Google cannot make demands of third party sites to cease selling/distributing (POSSIBLY) copyrighted works.
First off, Google itself, unless it's the actual publisher/author of record, has no standing to make such a demand (request actually).
Second off, Google has NO way of knowing what other ebook sites have coterminous agreements with a given publisher or author.
This is why it's up to the publisher/author to submit DMCA requests to the proper channels. And Google itself isn't a proper channel!
2: This idiot tries to compare it to a store selling knockoff handbags.
First off, these are ebooks, not handbags.
Second off, Google is not "the police" of the Internet. They have no legal standing to do go in and shut these sites down. ESPECIALLY since they have no way of knowing if such a thing would interfere with another distributor's agreements with the publisher/author.
3: Google has no problem going after people who infringe on their own patents.
That's because they're GOOGLE'S patents.
What this imbecile is asking for would be like Google going after you for violating Lockheed Martin's patents.
For someone who is an ostensibly successful publisher, this person shows a SHOCKING lack of knowledge of one of the central legal protections available to him for internet distribution. And it calls into question what other mistaken notions this ignoramus is operating under.
Oh! And now he's just jumped into a large, bright red crosshairs costume and strapped on a blinking neon "Kick Me" sign.
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For someone who is an ostensibly successful publisher, this person shows a SHOCKING lack of knowledge of one of the central legal protections available to him for internet distribution.
Or understands quite well how to use public outrage as free advertizing.
Take a few deep breaths first (Score:3)
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Sometimes I just compose a really nasty email when I'm mad, preferably in a separate editor so there's no chance of sending it. That often cools me off.
Why are pirates bothering with their crap? (Score:5, Informative)
An earlier commenter pointed out that Square One publishes some books of medical lies, peddling false cancer cures and the like, but check this out:
http://www.squareonepublishers... [squareonepublishers.com]
http://www.squareonepublishers... [squareonepublishers.com]
http://www.squareonepublishers... [squareonepublishers.com]
This is a publisher of lies and woo. They do not deserve to be pirated. They do not deserve to be read. They do not even deserve to be acknowledged, except for purposes of mockery.
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Detox and Revitalize: Color Pathway to the Soul.
The others aren't any better.
"Let me ask you something." (Score:2)
Fan of analogies, is he. The question is, if a store sells knockoff designer handbags, why do you want the police to g
Writers are not the brightest.... (Score:2)
when it comes to technology.
Dear authors... Technology is hard, leave it to the professionals.
and Square One Publishers cried... (Score:2)
all the way to the bank. -_-
With understanding like that... (Score:2)
...he should probably be in Congress, no?
Darn headings (Score:2)
On first scanning the headline, I read "... Google Could End Privacy". And I thought, meh what's new. C'mon, I can be the only one?
Freedom to disagree with the law (Score:2)
Google has no problem allowing other e-book websites to illegally offer a number of our e-book titles, either free or at reduced rates, to anyone on the Internet
Even if this were true instead of a complete misunderstanding, what's wrong with that? I also have no problem with other ebook websites illegally offering 100% of your ebook titles, either free or at reduced rates, to anyone on the Internet. I don't agree with copyright law, and I'm not legally required to agree with it, and I won't lift a finger to help enforce it unless required to do so by law.
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From what I've heard about the books, I do have a problem with anyone distributing them. This is entirely separate from copyright concerns.
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No. It is wrong. Completely wrong. Google has nothing to do with other companies that are violating copyrights.
And no one is defending Google. That is because Google is not involved as he claims they are.
Here's an example for you: ... ...
If you license Amalgamated Alice to distribute your product
But then you find Bob's Basement Bargains is distributing a copy of your product
Alice is not r
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Even the worst serial killer is absolutely entitled to being defended if accused wrongly. And Google is accused wrongly in this case. Yes, a lot of what they do is despicable and worth of contempt. But that does not mean that it's ok to just bash them at any occasion.
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Thomas More and the Devil. Google it.
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Google can block stuff, ...
From being displayed on google.com, sure, but it cannot "block stuff" on the remote site actually hosting the content. It seems that's the point about which Mr. Shur is confused. The DMCA take down requests need to be sent the sites hosting the content, not to Google. Mr. Shur is, apparently, an idiot.
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Wait 'till he finds out that his stuff is being hosted overseas, and that the DMCA doesn't apply outside the United States.
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Google also can not block stuff from showing up via a DDG search, Yahoo search, or any other search engine that is not Google.
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Didn't the DMCA kinda reverse that? It always seemed like whoever claims that they hold some kind of copyright can slap that four letter insult to anyone with a sense of shame or justice at you and then it's on you to prove that you used it legally.
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Not quite. If you submit a counterclaim than the DMCA takedown is neutralised and you go back to the old-fashioned method: They can still sue you in a civil court.
There is an unanticipated issue with the counterclaim though: It requires revealing your real identity and address (to enable the suing), which can be a dangerous thing to do in a lot of hostile debate communities. It invites harassment.
Re: (Score:2)
And at that point, users discover that there are search engines other than Google.
Re:Is that the new Netiquette? (Score:4, Informative)
Get a job offer, respond angrily for no reason in particular and start harrassing the company who offered the job?
There was no job offer - 'join the team' is poor phrasing from Tim Cushing at Techdirt, in an article that's more distorted and melodramatic than the piece he's complaining about (which doesn't seem particularly angry). The publisher was approached by Google about selling their books via Play. The publisher declined, and pointed out that Google was at the same time making a profit from linking to pirated copies of the publisher's books in its search results. The publisher doesn't seem terribly well informed about how this whole Internet thing operates, but Techdirt's hyperventilating clickbait isn't exactly a model of clarity and accuracy either.
Re: (Score:2)
Content filtering being turned on is the quickest way to bring the whole internet to its knees. There is not a computer invented that could keep up with the flood to perform content filtering in realtime.