Google Removes Pirate Bay Frontpage From Search Results | Hacker News Reader

Google Removes Pirate Bay Frontpage From Search Results

torrentfreak.com

32 pointsmindplunge20 comments

Please direct your hate towards anyone in Congress in 1998, when the DMCA was passed unanimously.

and Congress in 2009 for not noticing that this thing is broken

And constituents in 2010 who will not care about their congress-person's stance on this issue when it is time to vote.

The DMCA is surprisingly fair and well balanced.

- The content owner may sent a counter-notification, and the Online Service Provider must put the content back up with two weeks, or it may be held liable for monetary damages.

- The original DMCA notice issuer must then actually sue the content owner to actually remove the content

- If the issuer makes a false claim, and it can be shown that they knew it was false, then they can be held liable for significant fines under the DMCA.

The only downside I see is that an average Joe doesn't know how this works and can easily have their content removed for ten days or longer. For breaking news and the like, ten days on the internet can be an eternity. But usually its not a problem.

I'm curious, how would you address this problem better?

Criminalizing all circumvention of access control is "fair and well balanced"? Even if the circumvention does not result in the infringement of copyright?

The DMCA enabled the broken, DRM-ridden media landscape we enjoy today.

Maybe, maybe not, but with respect to the posted article which is clearly referencing § 512(c), the DMCA is surprisingly fair and well balanced.

We're talking about takedown procedures, not DRM.

There's little to stop copyright holders from using the takedown provision in bad faith. Sure, they have to swear they believe the content is infringing... but how can anyone disprove that? And there are plenty of companies that seem to truly believe that there's basically no fair use of their content whatsoever.

You also forgot to mention that although the provider is supposed to restore the content within 14, they're also not allowed to do so any earlier than 10 business days. They have to give the copyright holder time to consider if they want to bring a lawsuit. So if I don't like, say, a negative book review you wrote, I can knock it offline for minimum two weeks with a single spurious letter.

There are many examples of copyright holders using the DMCA takedown in bad faith to silence critics.

I take issue with "and it can be shown that they knew it was false". If you're going to force a takedown of someone else's content, it's your responsibility to be entirely sure.

> The DMCA is surprisingly fair and well balanced.

Right. Tell that to Dimitry Skylarov.

Update:

Google said on Friday that an error caused the search engine to remove The Pirate Bay from its search pages.

"Google received a (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down request that erroneously listed Thepiratebay.org, and as a result, this URL was accidentally removed from the Google search index," Google said in a statement. "We are now correcting the removal, and you can expect to see Thepiratebay.org back in Google search results this afternoon."

Later, Google updated it's statement: "The removal appears to be an internal error and not part of a DMCA request."

Separately, The Pirate Bay's site appeared down Friday afternoon at 1:15 p.m. PT, at least in many U.S. areas.

Maybe they just want people to use this instead:

http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=003849996876419856805:erhh...

I could certainly understand the justification for removing individual torrents, maybe even the broad category of pornography, but why the front page?

What's wrong with pornography?

Nothing. I was assuming that 100% of the pornography is copyright infringing and so the pornographer's union was correct in trying to DMCA it away, but I guess it is possible that there is CC licensed amateur pornography out there.

Hopefully experts-exchange will be added to that list...

And anything referring to 'sedo'.

I must be uninformed about something but why is Pirate Bay getting all the flack from the DMCA; having their servers raided, going to court, this. Aren't there a dozen other torrent indexers to persecute?

Update: As usual, this "story" was a mistake that was corrected within hours. Yet another case where a 24-hour delay would have helped.

Perhaps an opportunity for Bing to make inroads?

Google still finds http://thepiratebay.org/browse

But Bing wins with the front page: http://www.bing.com/search?q=pirate+bay&go=&form=QBL...

On a side note: The way bing shows the first result it made it feel like an ad and I skipped it the first time.

Also: The related search results in Bing are quite useful.

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