Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More | Hacker News Reader

Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

torrentfreak.com

217 pointsbarredo97 comments

Wow, 22 paragraphs about the removal of 5 keywords from instant and auto? Jesus, what will folks have to do - type out their entire search term and hit enter? Censorship?

I don't even think this is accurate. Granted, there is something off about how the terms stall out in instant, but for example as soon as I finish typing bittorrent both instant and auto complete kick back in and show as normal: http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6820/bittorrentac.png

In contrast, if you type out a sex term it quits instant and auto complete and never restarts them, you must hit enter: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7349/asexac.png (mostly safe for work - no results)

I imagine the real reason google is doing this is ad placement. After all instant is just about having the ads up longer. Google "bittorrent" and a standard search term like "real estate" - notice any differences? Yup, they don't sell ads on the bittorrent serp (just like they wont sell adsense on a torrent tracker)

> I don't even think this is accurate. Granted, there is something off about how the terms stall out in instant

There's no stalling, it's completely disabled and will not suggest anything until you type the entire word.

> In contrast, if you type out a sex term it quits instant and auto complete and never restarts them

So? How does that have anything to do with justifing blocking BitTorrent terms? If I type "install bitt[orrent]" or "install ut[orrent]", I get no suggestions as it is clearly blocked.

I would guess people are searching "bittorrent [copyright material]" and someone has had their lawyers shout at google for it, because it could be seen as prompting users into pirating. Like "torrent li[nkin park]" might have got them in trouble because before the person was just searching "torrent li[nux]" so now a user who wants a legit torrent for linux is being told oh hey you can pirate linkin park albums too!

(I don't agree that this is right, but it seems the sensible explanation to me)

Er, sorry, accidental downmod from 4 to 3, intended upmod to 5.

It's rather obviously not "completely disabled" if I can type "bittorrent" and then get auto-suggestions.

By completely, I mean there's no suggestions whatsoever, and I said "until you type the entire word".

You don't get to redefine the definition of "completely" just to make your argument sound better.

Suggestions are completely disabled while typing the blocked words. If I said partially, that would imply that suggestions are still given while typing the blocked words, excluding the blocked word itself.

Agree. I know Google is the new evil but all they've done is turned off autocomplete. If I type "[film name] torrent" in Google, I still get an instant, direct link to the piretebay download of said movie.

I think it actually makes sense to hide from autocomplete - because, after all, you don't want to entice people to go for the illegal stuff: If they want to find it, they can. But you don't want to suggest it first thing.

If you typed "bingo card creator" into Google, two of the first ten suggestions were "bingo card creator torrent" and "bingo card creator serial". I have a screenshot on my blog somewhere... here we go.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/09/05/desktop-aps-versus-web-a...

Direct link: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/piracy-is-dying....

It is more than mildly annoying to have a modern day Clippy looking over one's users' brand searches and saying "It looks like you're looking for software... have you considered stealing it instead?"

It appears to return similar results right now. I've always been frustrated when I would search for software, and the entire first page results, besides the actual first result, were rapidshare and megaupload aggregating blogs.

The query of the title of the Pragmatic Bookshelf book that happens to be open on my desk returns 4 relevant links. The remaining 6 are sites advertising free PDF downloads. Back in the day, one would have to go to a dedicated search engine for these links.

As much as I dislike "Censoring", Google should decide whether it wants to be in the business of providing links to sites that clearly are aggregators for filesharing and fileuploading links to pirated and copyrighted content. The Pirate Bay, et al., can take care of that.

The business of providing links? They're hosting most of those blogs!

While I agree it's distasteful, a good percentage of Google's search users are surely looking for exactly that link to illegal copies though? By providing those links quickly and easily Google is arguably improving the quality of the search results for its end users.

Now, I'm with you that I'd rather that the search results were worse in this specific way, but this sort of thing is surely a direct result of algorithmically optimising search results to present the user with what they're after even if they don't necessarily know exactly how to find it, a general good and a defeating of the sort of SEO techniques we usually complain about here.

In general though - Google already has a 'SafeSearch' function for images, which seems to work tolerably well without complaint. Perhaps a similar system could be introduced both for results and suggestions so that these to illegal content and sites they consider likely to harm my computer could be filtered out by default and only returned if I specifically set the preference or search terms to look for them?

You should try the Duck Duck Go challenge. I don't see torrents in my search results unless I choose !torrent of course.

Suggestion: make a few microsites with 'bingo card creator torrents' and such to crowd these guys off the front page, then have a nice blurb up on the page where you explain the downsides of not having an official copy and your stellar support.

That way you might mitigate some of the damage these jerks do to your bottom line.

Not worth even the hour of my time it would take, or I would have done it four years ago. (Ironically, using minisites to get ten slots on a SERP is bad to Google's view of the world in a way that serialz are not.)

It is just the psychic nuisance factor: every time I see that box it's like "Come on guys, really?"

Sounds like the esteemed director of search quality at google has his work cut out for him.

You probably haven't investigated, but I'm wondering if any of those are actually what they claim to be, or more likely just malware payloads. It's quite common for the black hats to shotgun-distribute a malware trojan labeled as a crack or serial for thousands or millions of software titles.

(I am resolved to only ever get burned by that once...)

How about getting some help from bloggers? Incentives for them to write about not pirating your software?

I consider this a valid challenge of making a profitable software business. You shouldn't need to rely on Google hiding results (or litigation) to sell more licenses. Your customers should want to buy it and if they don't - you have failed.

Removing 'bingo card creater torrent' from suggestions given to people typing 'bingo card creater' seems fairly reasonable to me, for the reasons patio11 outlined.

What is weird is that they don't autocomplete 'bitto' to 'bittorrent'. I mean, at that point they already know what they're searching for, why not continue to expedite them?

It should be noted that despite the headline - Google is not censoring any search terms. They're just not allowing certain words in the search auto-complete. A controversial move to be sure, but something they've done with other words since the introduction of search auto complete

Well, I'll say "Google is not censoring any search results" but it is censoring any search terms, right?

No. It is declining to actively push certain terms on the user.

Well, I think that's it and you're right.

> It is declining to actively push certain terms on the user.

Let's say a search engine in China was obligated to "decline actively pushing a certain query", would we not call that censorship? Can someone explain my semantic hangup?

Well, whatever they're doing it's never going to have any effect on blogspot, where the vast majority of filedrop blogs are located.

Once upon a time, a frog lived in a pool of water. One day, the water began to slowly grow hot…

I take your meaning, but as to your metaphor... http://www.theatlantic.com/james-fallows/boiledfrog/?cid=140

Well, maybe not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Interesting! I wonder why no one has tried to replicate the .2C/minute experiment?

Well, I have a couple of teenage boys...

Aren't there plenty of sexual terms that are already "censored" in the instant suggestions database? That hasn't affected anything so I doubt this will have any large scale impact on file sharing.

Racial ones too, I believe.

Yeah. You can't do this shit anymore:

http://uvtblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/why_do_black.j...

http://suggestoftheday.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/gsold....

At least the results aren't as funny. "Chinese people are aliens" is still a google-endorsed suggestion though. WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

It's one thing for them to refrain from auto-completing the users' first few letters with suggestions including the filthiest words in the language. That's quite understandable to me. After all, it seems unlikely that those results are what users ordinarily want and there is a very high attentional cost to offering them wrongly (from the UI perspective).

But in this case, they're filtering out perfectly ordinary words for perfectly legitimate network protocols and actual products. If I type "utorren" there's no reason Google should withhold the "t" other that pure evil search-term engineering.

It's incomprehensible to me that a company that refused to filter "democracy" in China will agree to demote "utorrent" in America.

Agreed, it's definitely hypocritical of Google.

The whole "don't be evil" ideal has a two big caveats these days: 1) as long as it doesn't interfere with profits 2) or google's corporate interests.

But how can not returning search suggestions that the user in all probability actually wants be in their corporate interest? How could this do anything but detract from the #1 value Google has: the quality of their search?

What miniscule gain in the reduction of uTorrent users or the temporary appeasement of RIAA/MPAA demands could this possibly be worth the debasing of their brand image?

Just out of curiosity, can someone explain what it was about what I said that it deserves to be modded into negative numbers?

Did I break a rule, is this site overrun with fanboyism, or something else entirely?

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Yeah I knew that which is why I wasn't complaining. Agreed, this is boring.

Your claim that Google is not censoring search results is entirely unfounded. You are correct about filtering being done on auto-complete, but Google also filters the living snot out of results. They have always filtered results, and providing "relevant" pages for the given search terms is only one of their goals.

It strikes me this could be a clever flack reducing measure. Censoring from autocomplete would be a good way of reducing the annoyance felt by content creators as they google their own title.

The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps?

Could this be anything but a precursor to trying to filter out of the main search results?

So they censoring their auto-complete list, isn't that still censoring?

Censoring whom?

Exactly. There's obviously a difference between Google actively suggesting a term that could encourage piracy, versus providing the results for people who already have that query in their mind and choose to submit it as a search.

"kill o" suggests "kill obama". Is Google encouraging to kill Obama ?

"kill osama bin laden" appears only with "kill os". Is this an hint of the Google priorities ?

These are obviously rhetorical questions.

Think we can all hear DuckDuckGo's next advertising campaign coming round the corner...

And after reading this comment (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2145939) it's guaranteed! </snark>

DuckDuckGo doesn't have an instant search at all so even less-than-perfect Google's solution is better than DuckDuckGo's non-existent solution. I don't see what DuckDuckGo could advertise here.

Doesn't matter that they don't offer the exact same search, just needs general principle points to be made.

"We don't believe in censoring the web, so here's our promise to you: our entire service will always work 100% to give you what you're looking for."

"When you search with DuckDuckGo, you know that, no matter what you're looking for, you're receiving our very best."

"We know it's not our place to make it harder to search for certain topics, so we'll keep providing you with the best tools for the job, and leave you to chose how to use them."

etc.

That's funny, I consider DDG's lack of "Instant" a feature.

I know I just tried duckduckgo.com for the first time tonight. It didn't suck.

I also tried baidu.com, it has no problem suggesting the word completion "uTorrent"...after just "ut"!

Torrentfreak should protest this by stopping showing Google ads on their site.

One person neglecting to call out of work does not make a boycott.

'Against a decision' and 'against a company' are different things.

I take it that you mean Google has a grip too strong on internet economy: you can't stand against it too boldly or ditch its services altogether lest you risk losing revenue from AdWords... that right?

Seems reasonable to me. Google is generating these autocomplete suggestions so they are ultimately responsible for them. I think there's quite a big difference between pushing search suggestions at people versus delivering the results of a precise query. It's a bit too soon to start crying censorship. That being said it would not surprise me at all if they end up eliminating the results entirely someday. Various courts around the world have cracked down on torrent/NZB sites, which are basically just search engines, if they can't get away with this it seems hard to believe Google can either.

Searching for rapidshare or torrents on Google usually just leads you to garbage spam sites anyway.

I wonder if they're doing this to avoid having someone making a claim that they're inducing people to commit copyright infringement?

That's the only sense I can make out of this.

I just typed "utor" into google, waited a bit, and "uTorrent" appeared in the dropdown just fine.

doesnt work for me, until i enter that last t of utorrent nothing appears, sad.

Works fine for me.

Luckily instant search is still in beta, has some quirks, and may never be fully implemented. I think Google knows this and is playing both sides of the fence. I don't use instant search because a) I am a competent and swift typist b) any heavy user knows instant search limits results. It's a toy.

Perhaps Google, with its obviously inconsistent censorship policy, is trying to rile up the users being affected as well as the companies of their services to finally take action again the entertainment industry's censorship. Perhaps Google is the Green Hornet here, posing to be the bad guy?

Then again, I think that I'm just wishfully thinking, not wanting to accept the fact that Google has finally lost its independent mindset and vision of connecting the internets.

The last sentence on the blog sums it up best.

"Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide."

I wonder how Google can justify those contradicting actions.

I'm kinda off-put about their decision to censor the software program titles, rather then say copyrighted illegal content. Obviously the former is the "easy" fix, while they should have approached the latter solution instead. And while this is only a censor on the autocomplete and instant search (neither of which I actively use) it does pave the way for eventual search result censoring.

Then again this could be a good thing for competitors. I can see a market open for a "censor free" search engine. Tagline "You're an adult, search like one". Hey... any entrepreneurs feel up for a new startup? wink wink nudge nudge

I misread your comment the first time through, but the misreading gave me a profound idea... "Why doesn't Google black-list the names of the copyrighted works?"

Food for thought.

Why doesn't Google black-list the names of the copyrighted works?

Because they are probably available legitimately somewhere. Or the user might be looking for information about the work, not the work itself.

Yes, of course. But it's mostly a rhetorical question. You see, the new auto-complete filters are banning the terms of legitimate services (albeit theses services can be misused) in conjunction with terms of copyrighted works (e.g. <photoshop rapidshare> or <rapidshare photoshop>).

It's the combination of terms, so if one should be banned to please copyright holders, it almost makes sense to ban the terms of copyrighted works. After all, it's the copyright holders pushing for this kind of filtering.

> I'm kinda off-put about their decision to censor the software program titles, rather then say copyrighted illegal content.

Pardon, but are you really serious? Disregarding the obvious senselessness of the term "copyrighted illegal content", people search for book titles all the time. People search for software all the time. Half the stuff people search the Internet for is copyrighted or trademarked. The only reasonable way to stop suggesting torrents is to block on the names of torrent software.

I think the word "censorship" is being abused here.

I am really disgusted with Google for this.

uTorrent is a great piece of software and completely legitimate application. I have used it to transfer open source and other content all the darn time. Peer-to-peer is a perfectly legitimate network application architecture and it's simply ridiculous that anyone should question it.

Those of you saying "this is effectively meaningless and not censorship" ... well why are they bothering to do it if it doesn't mean anything?

All of you l33t web startup founders had better realize that it may be your network architecture keyword search term that they come after next. After all, these people are fundamentally against the transfer of raw data, whatever its form.

Oh how I wish this was intended as a joke.

Google is putting the interests of other corporations over those of its users or investors. This is not a laughing matter.

> This is not a laughing matter.

The fact that they're not actively pushing users to searching for certain bittorrent-related terms may not be a laughing matter, but the way people are responding to it certainly is.

I think that this idea that Google's autocomplete functionality is "actively pushing users" is dangerous because it could equally be applied to search results, or anything else. It seems to imply that anything Google returns has equivalent potential agenda and bias. The idea of Google being "fair" seems based on the premise of a strict firewall between advertising/promoted links and the famous algorithm for recommending results that users most likely actually want to find. If they're any smarter than Yahoo, they'll understand the second is what enables the first.

It would sure turn my world upside-down if it ends up that Bing wins takes the "fairest search" title in the minds of the users. But we may be seeing early hints of Google faltering here.

Could there be any connection with the recent executive rearrangement here?

Either state your counter-argument or stfu, this above the fray snark is insulting and useless.

OK, I'll burn more karma because I'm feeling feisty today.

marshray is concerned about Google's move, just like a lot of other people. boredguy8 is obviously not concerned and thinks marshray's concerns are so dumb that they would be better as a joke. But he doesn't say why he thinks those concerns are a joke, he's just condescendingly pointing and laughing and calling marshray stupid. How is that acceptable debate? Like I said it is insulting and useless. If you are going to downvote me please explain what's wrong with what I'm saying.

Thanks for that explanation. It's really odd how the quality of logic (and balance of moderation) on this site sometimes seems to dip below what would be expected on Slashdot.

And yet, they still have this:

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&safe=off&client=g...

Given that I don't particularly like "instant" and that these results still appear on the full search, I would consider this a feature, not a fault...

“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.”

so you'll be more successful in terms of search traffic if your client doesn't contain the word torrent!

I read the article and it is not censoring. It's just not including these sites in the instant results. They do turn up in the search results though. It's like the library putting the Playboys behind the counter and you have to ask for them.

It's not censorship, it's just a feature that they decide not to apply to one branch of queries because 'suggesting' such a search might get them in hot water with entities with very deep pockets.

I don't think choosing what you're going to republish is censorship.

Another reason to use DuckDuckGo. Slowly but surely Google is losing the patronage of nerds everywhere. Censorship like this will help to ensure an even more rapid abandonment.

I think this is very hypocritical of Google.

Just a few months ago they pulled out of China because of censorship, and now they're censoring stuff themselves. Sure it's not Exactly the same, but everything starts with a small precedent. Now that Google is powerful, it first starts off with censoring torrents, then what next? If Google starts to censor and control the outflow of data, it just kills the current perception I have for Google.

This is nothing innovative.

This is evil. They should rather tweak their algorithm instead of blacklisting phrases?

Nonsense. They are perfectly within their rights to not suggest that people behave in ways that are against the law.

You may not like that it is against the law in many places but (1) legally aggressive companies don't like other companies suggesting their stuff gets pirated and google is a much juicier target than John Doe, (2) it would not help google if Jane Doe brought up google suggesting she download a torrent when she was doing a search to buy the album if Justin Bieber and pirated it instead.

This is just a sound business decision by google, not evil.

I don't agree. A simple keyword match does not determine if a keyword result is suggesting that I break the law in any given region. "Ubuntu torrent" being a prime example of this.

As soon as you've completed the word 'torrent' a whole slew of suggestions pops up.

That is correct but the original point still stands.

2010 - the year the free Internet died.

Sorry guys, I am having trouble believing this...

typing in "bittorrent" will yield bittorrent.com and 4th result as utorrent. Nothing is filtered.

Re-read the article. It's not claiming that anything is filtered.

The author of the article is up in arms because Google has removed "bittorrent" and other terms from auto-complete. In other words, if you type "bittorr" in the search box and pause, it will not suggest "bittorrent" as a completion.

Here's a teacup. Good luck finding the tempest.

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