U2 Manager Paul McGuinness: Google Should 'Take Down' Sites And 'Keep Them Down'
from the be-careful-what-you-wish-for,-www.u2.com dept
Paul McGuinness, U2's manager, ("World's Richest Band Seeks Handout") has been a longtime critic of Google, whose search engine he views as being nothing more than a portal for pirates. That's when he's not blaming pretty much everyone else (ISPs, any tech company connected to the internet in general) for not making U2 incrementally richer. But Google is never far from his mind, not even when accepting an Industry Icon award from Billboard Magazine for his 35 years as the band's manager.
McGuinness (again) thinks he has a quick fix for the piracy problem, and it all revolves around Google.
What needs to be done is simple, take the sites down and keep them down. If the pirates can manage to replace their sites instantly with legions of bots, Google, with their brilliant algorithm engineers can counter it. We need the technology giants like Google to do the things that labels, the publishers, the artists, the writers repeatedly ask them to do. They need to show corporate and social responsibility. Take down the illegal sites, keep them down and clear the way for the legal digital distributors like iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, the new Jimmy Iovine Beats service, which promises to be a very serious competitor.Yes. It's all so "simple." Just "take sites down" and "keep them down." Like many people who frequently confuse "Google" for "the Internet" (see also: many people in the UK government), McGuinness overstates the simplicity of his request while granting powers to Google that it simply doesn't possess.
Let's tackle the "simplicity" aspect first. If McGuinness is only referring to delisting sites (and that's somewhat unclear), it's not nearly as easy as he (or the RIAA, MPAA, UK government) thinks. There are several ways this could go wrong (see also: site blocking/web filters), not the least of which is that it puts internet access in the control of agencies and entities that can't even seem to issue DMCA notices without taking down legitimate content sources. So, if labels and studios (and those represented by them) can't even send out failure-free DMCA notices, they're hardly in the position to tell a company that indexes millions of sites how "simple" it would be to "block" or "take down" pirate sites.
Then there's what's actually in Google's power to do. McGuinness does mention "algorithms" but shortly thereafter he's deploying wording that sounds suspiciously like a call for Google to take down sites, as in do a private ICE job and lock up the domain, thus keeping it out of searches and "clearing the way" for legitimate offerings. That's something Google simply can't do, and even if it could, certainly shouldn't do. Google's main product is a search engine. It crawls and indexes sites. It is not in the "internet police" business. That's not what it's product is intended to do and that's not what a majority of those using the search engine want Google to be doing.
But the RIAA, MPAA and others insist this is Google's job -- to sniff out infringing content and remove it from the web (or at least, its search results). Google processes millions of DMCA notices per year, but this is always viewed as a sign of failure on the company's part. If it was "better" at the job McGuinness and others think it should be doing, it wouldn't be receiving so many notices.
Somehow, it always comes back to the claim that Google "owes" millions of content creators something for indexing the web.
I would like to see them open their hearts a little and be more generous to the ecosystem that started their success a few years ago. Google talks a lot about Internet freedom -- that's fine, we all support Internet freedom don't we* -- but let's not confuse freedom of speech with the freedom to steal pirated stuff.*Note: Paul McGuinness does NOT support internet freedom.
I don't think anyone confuses freedom of speech with piracy, but just like the above situation, it's not nearly as simplistic as McGuinness and others believe it is. Shut down a whole site because it hosts or links to pirated content and you're also shutting down everything that surrounded it, a lot of which greatly resembles "free speech."
McGuinness likely won't be happy until every search engine is completely subverted by IP-heavy industries, but that's apparently acceptable collateral damage if it results in incremental sales increases.
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Filed Under: censorship, copyright, engineering, open internet, paul mcguinness, search engines, u2
Companies: google
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Google is not the internet. I somehow manage to deal with the internet and never use Google at all. If I can do it so can the hordes of people that use the internet globally if given a sufficient reason to. Make Google a non-player in importance and that is exactly what will happen. Things will go on as usual, sans Goggle. I somehow fail to grasp exactly how that delisting sites will cure the issue.
More to the point is that younger people are no longer considering rock n roll as the main fare for consumption of music according to a recent article I read a few days ago. Neil Young claimed rock n roll will never die but it's days are already numbered if the future generations aren't caring to hear it. The legacy copyright folks have no one to blame for this but the very ones pushing to wall off culture such as you see in this article so being called for.
If you drive away your fan base through threats to them by court, exactly how long do you think this is going to last? At some point the public will get educated but not in the manner that is being sought. The message they will get instead is leave it all alone and there is no issue.
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Paul McGuiness is not much brighter than the "shareholders' meeting
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Doesn't matter anyway, bands like Slayer manage to get grammies with zero radio play.
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Let put a delay on the guitar and let it drone just like the rest of our music.
If noone is pirating our music, we don't want anybody pirating any music.
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How can Google "take down" sites?
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Re: How can Google "take down" sites?
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Getting Google to de-list sites
Great idea RIAA / MPAA!
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Re: Getting Google to de-list sites
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If they don't get the information in the form of a hyperlink anyway, that is.
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Absolutely right
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Thank you
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terminology problem
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Ah yes. It does that sometimes. Sorry. :)
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I know percussion maintenance works on old TV's and some laptops, but I really don't recommend it in this instance.
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Fuck that, torrent indexing search engines are the way to go!
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"We need the technology giants like Google to do the things that labels, the publishers, the artists, the writers repeatedly ask them to do [for free]"
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The sense of entitlement is strong in this one...
Here's a question I don't think I've ever seen satisfactorily answered: Why?
Why should google, or any other tech company care what happens to the recording industry? Does the movie industry go out of their way, spending time and money to defend and protect the automotive industry? Does the aviation industry move heaven and earth to protect the farming industry? Or how about the recording industry itself, does it tirelessly work to protect the tech industry?(Answer: No, no it does not)
This is something that gets me every time the subject comes up, the massive, glaring sense of self-importance, arrogance and entitlement that people like that demonstrate, as though everyone around them owes them, as though every other industry has nothing better to do than jump to their tune and do everything in their power to 'defend' the movie and recording industries, no matter what it may cost them to do so.
And as far as 'social responsibility', considering the copyright maximalists were so worried about any possible 'weakening' of copyright that they fought tooth and nail against expanding fair use rules to benefit the blind, the sheer hypocrisy in such a statement just boggles the mind.
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This I believe
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That's because it is. The DMCA takedown process is blatantly unconstitutional, and Google has failed to stand up for the rights of the Internet users that its search service is supposed to enable and empower.
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Not only would this instantly kill Google, it would kill the internet.
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Common carrier?
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(And not to STEAL a quotation, heavens no, credit to Upton Sinclair)
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Really cynical
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I think this insane speech was to advertise Jimmy Iovine Beats service.
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As the actions and results achieved by such actions show, the collateral damage is more than acceptable to certain backward IP heavy industries even when there is no noticeable effect on either piracy or sales.
Its not the results but the principle no matter how costly that principle is to everyone.
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As the actions and results achieved by such actions show, the collateral damage is more than acceptable to certain backward IP heavy industries even when there is no noticeable effect on either piracy or sales.
Its not the results but the principle no matter how costly that principle is to everyone.
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They equate Google to the Internet because they see Google as the Internet's Gatekeeper, much like how Hollywood and the music industry are Gatekeepers. They think because they have an iron fist on all that is music and movies that likewise Google should have an iron fist on all the internet.
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Best quote was overlooked
The stupidity...it burns!
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I wonder if he realises that the "ecosystem" responsible for their success is a bunch of open-source and free protocols, software, languages and other systems that encouraged growth and innovation because they reduced the barrier-to-entry for international exposure to virtually nil for the first time in history for ordinary people.
Nah, of course he doesn't, he's addressing the fictional internet that his industry invented to make them feel less like idiots for ignoring the web for a decade, thus sealing their own fates.
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Keep slamming him
Look, all he is saying is that Google has the choice to continue to index pirate sites (you know, the ones that gets tens of thousands of DMCA notices) and to continue to offer them up as the prime results for their searches, or they can recognize that these sites are CLEARLY infringing, and take steps to stop the pollution of their SERPs.
No, it's not about a single misdirected DMCA taking a site down (it doesn't happen, Google can't "take sites down", they can only stop listing them), rather it's about Google realizing that some sites are major piracy hubs, that that they shouldn't continue to support and encourage piracy.
If Google used the 10,000th page removal as a trigger to put sites in the sandbox for a while, out of sight and with no results, perhaps it would change the way people operate.
For that matter, Google is very good at spotting sites that are just scrapes of other sites. Most of the torrent "index" sites are replicants of each other, the same data presented in slightly different formats. Google could easily determine things like mirror sites and portal sites, and when they take down the main site, they could do the same by applying what they know.
Moreover, it would not be hard for Google to de-index chat boards and such that are mostly spam hauses for file locker links - if the file locker gets too many complaints, sites that link excessively to them should also be devalued or even removed from the search results.
Google can do something if they want, but they are making huge profits on not doing anything, which is quite a bit more evil than they want to be, IMHO.
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Re: Keep slamming him
You say Google 'can do something if they want', but the question remains: Why should they? Google does already de-list sites/links that receive a valid DMCA claim(or at least one that isn't glaringly wrong), why should they go the extra mile to do the police work of the *AA's, something that would take time, effort, and money to do, all for an industry that, due to their arrogance, seems to think that Google works for them, and so owes them that time, effort and money.
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Re: Re: Keep slamming him
First off, thanks for your reply. That it took more than 24 hours for a reply to come up shows exactly how long my comment was held in moderation before Mike's crack staff got around to posting it. Kudos. You likely will never get to read this reply, because by the time it gets posted, this post will be on page 5 or something.
So to answer your question, it's because Google (and Bing, and Yahoo) are companies that are in a position to influence the consumer, and they have all chosen to respect DMCA notices because they also understand that they do have some responsibility in the situation.
Moreover, after a certain level of infringement, Google is actually wasting time and money to continue to index sites that are generating tons of notices. Remember, DMCAs to Google are generally for sites that are either unreachable or unresponsive (or like H33t, want to change to process removal requests). At some point, Google would do better to cut their own losses and stop indexing sites that continually generate significant numbers of valid DMCA notices.
It is a question of quality is as well: If a site is repeatedly getting pages removed, those pages should marked generally as bad, and a negative on the site. At bare minimum, such a site should have a hard time making it onto early result pages because their site should be considered poorly. Google has all sorts of punishments for sites with too many links, too few links, too many words, too few words, and 1000 other things, so linking to a bunch of pages removed from the index should be a good indication that things are not good on that site.
"Google does already de-list sites/links that receive a valid DMCA claim"
They will remove single pages without consideration for anything else. A torrent site with millions of pages (most of them show files that are no longer actually seeded or shared anywhere), 10,000 DMCA notices wouldn't even scratch the surface. By ignoring the signs that the site has issues, the continue to award and encourage whack-a-mole attitudes. Google scraps the page, they rename it slightly, and it gets reindexed on the same domain. How nice is that?
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Chew on a report vote.
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horse with no name just hates it when due process is enforced.
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They could do it for a day and call it a protest. Im sure these cunts would then see how much Google helps them.
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The UK government keeps trying to pass legislation that would make Google responsible for the content it indexes. In other words, they want to hold Google liable for piracy if Google links to a site that has pirated content. What's amusing is that none of the proposed legislation has suggested that Google should be liable for incorrectly blocking content, because the major studios don't give a damn about taking down protected speech.
So....think it through. If that sort of legislation ever got passed, Google would be exposed to huge liability every time they indexed a page that talked about, for example, U2. They'd be completely free of liability if they stopped indexing any page that mentioned U2. There's a lot of people frothing at the mouth to sue Google, so it wouldn't be economically viable for Google to continue indexing those pages. They'd get hundreds or thousands of lawsuits filed each day. They'd have to stop, until either the legislation got appealed or until all the studios freaked out and signed mandatory arbitration agreements.
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Meanwhile...
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And don't forget that they also still tell G'ments what to do despite the whole non-tax thing...
Hmmm...Maybe Google should make a special case tweak. Whenever someone searches for U2 free songs it instead searches for U2 hypocrisy tax avoidance. Everyone wins - people aren't directed to get U2's songs free, so U2+leeches are happy, and people are directed away from U2 songs, so they don't listen to them, so they benefit.
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Paul McGuinness is NOT U2's manager
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Re: Paul McGuinness is NOT U2's manager
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Ignorance
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What about other search engines?
And what's to stop someone from making their own search engine? Or better yet, just use an "underground" one like DuckDuckGo?
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negative land misspelled
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Says something about this world when U2 is the biggest band on Earth.
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