Fox Sends DMCA Takedown To Google To Remove Link To DMCA Takedown Sent By Fox

from the got-that? dept

Ah, meta DMCA takedowns. We just recently noted the growing trend of some DMCA notice filers to claim that the notices themselves are covered by copyright and thus should not be sent on to ChillingEffects.org, the clearinghouse for DMCA takedowns. It's highly questionable whether or not such DMCA notices are actually covered by copyright, but we hadn't seen anyone actually challenge the claims. However, TorrentFreak has an article on a slightly different, but related situation, where it appears that Fox sent a DMCA takedown to Google, ordering it to block links to a DMCA takedown Fox had sent Google earlier.

That may be confusing, so we'll go through this slowly. Basically, Fox sent Google an initial DMCA takedown, to get it to stop linking to links to unauthorized copies of the movie Avatar. Fair enough. Google, as it does, forwarded this takedown to ChillingEffects and removed the links in its index. However, then Fox apparently sent another DMCA takedown, demanding that Google take down the link to its original takedown in ChillingEffects. The second takedown has a huge list of links that it wants Google to stop linking to, so the ChillingEffects one is buried in there.

However, I have to wonder if that's a legit DMCA takedown. The only way it's legit is if Fox really does have some copyright claim over the original DMCA takedown notice, and that's iffy, at best. Of course, Google is pretty quick to takedown these links in order to retain its safe harbors. However, I do wonder if the folks at ChillingEffects, who certainly understand the law, will decide to pushback on this one.

Filed Under: chilling effects, copyright, dmca, search results, takedown
Companies: fox, google

Is Google's New Anti-Content Farm Algo Actually Better?

from the seems-like-it dept

We already posted Chas' interesting post about Google's attempt to "demote" content farms, and people are starting to explore whether or not the results are actually better. Alexis Madrigal, over at The Atlantic, used the fact that Google only rolled out the changes in the US and some remote proxies to compare results and noticed a clear improvement, at least in the search he tried.

Granted, this is just one search for "drywall dust," but if this is even remotely indicative of how well the new algorithm works, we're all going to be tremendously impressed. The search via India led to seven sites that were producing low-quality or aggregated content, a photo of someone covered in dust, and a blog about an individual's remodel. The new algorithm search yielded very different results. Not only were there less content farms but two specialty sites and five fora made the list as well as a Centers for Disease Control page on the dangers of drywall dust. Having clicked through all 20 links, I can assure you that the information delivered by the new algorithm is much, much better.

It's definitely still early, and I'm sure that there will be many similar comparisons, but it looks like some of my prediction from last summer in response to all sorts of public fretting about evil content farms may be coming true. As I noted at the time:

The situation that we're in right now is one where the current filtering mechanisms might not yet be good enough to distinguish quality content from crappy content. But that's a temporary state of affairs... If Google starts realizing that people do, in fact, find content farm content to be useless, that content will eventually get rated down, no matter how much they try to play SEO games.

Nice to see that might actually be happening.

Filed Under: content farms, search results
Companies: google

Google Declares War On Content Farms, What's Demand Media To Do?

from the the-markets-are-changing dept

Today we have a guest post from Chas Edwards, Chief Revenue Officer at Pixazza, who's been thinking quite a lot about various content-related business models lately, and wrote the following in response to the recent news of Google's algorithm change

Recently, Google announced changes to the PageRank algorithm that will affect nearly 12% of search results. According to their post at Google’s blog, Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal say the changes are “designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites — sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”

Presumably this will have an enormous effect on content farms such as Demand Media and Yahoo’s Associated Content. So what’s a content farmer to do?

A few days ago I wrote a post expressing my hope that content farms might grow up into something useful and generally less sucky. Maybe I’ve been reading too many happy-ending fairytales to my daughters. But when I pull back from the actual content from Demand or Associated that makes its way to my search results (which is usually quite bad), I see a platform — and platforms, theoretically, are things on which you can build something lame or something good. If the content farmers help individuals with knowledge find questions (search queries) that need answers (topics too niche for large or mid-sized publishers to cover), it seems plausible that some individuals might create useful content.

My argument, though, misses at least two important points, which Glenn Fleishman and Jeff Jarvis helped me think through.

From BuzzMachine:

“Why do people write on Huffington Post? Because they can. Because they give a shit. Because they like the attention and conversation. Because they couldn’t before. Why do they sing their songs on YouTube? Same reasons.”

Jarvis’s argument is: When we’re doing work, we expect to get paid. When we’re doing something for the love of it, we’re motivated by passion and the opportunity to be heard. When we’re doing it for love, in other words, we often create value for free. Quality content is traded for distribution to an audience and for a chance be an authority.

In a Twitter exchange with Glenn Fleishman, he said “The more you spend, the better content you get, up to a point.” His site, Wi-Fi Net News, was one of the first 10 sites that teamed up with Federated Media back in 2005. So my question back to him was: “But what about WFNN in the early days when the money wasn’t great but the content was?”

Aha. It’s about ownership. Glenn is specifically referring to IP ownership (his words, his URL, his business), but there’s a different kind of ownership too — one that Jarvis is getting at. I’m willing to contribute (to the best of my abilities) good content, free of charge, to Twitter, Quora or the Huffington Post even though I don’t own the IP or the business. I’m willing to do that because I do get to own the authority. Those platforms publish my by-line, picture and bio, so if someone out there thinks I’m smart or funny, I own that goodness. I’m not making money, but I get credit. I work hard to create value because, if I’m successful, that content distributed on those platforms polishes my brand and my reputation.

Even if Demand Media keeps most of the money they’re making from their websites, they might dodge the Google bullet if they can improve content quality by giving their contributors a sense of ownership over what they create. And then they marry the handsome prince!

Filed Under: content farms, search results
Companies: demand media, google

Yet Another Person Sues Google Because They Don't Like Pornographic Results When People Search On Their Name

from the it-happens dept

You may recall the series of lawsuits filed by a woman named Bev Stayart who was quite upset about how certain search results on her name appeared. It appears that she's not the only one. Eric Goldman alerts us to a new lawsuit filed against Google by one Alex Petrov, who seems quite upset that when you search on his name, images that he doesn't appreciate show up. There doesn't seem to be any actual legal claim in the filing, so I would imagine it's not long for this world, but Petrov states that Google is purposely trying to "create an association between the name 'Alex Petrov' and sexual content and activities of an offensive nature." Sometimes it makes you wonder if, in lawsuits involving technology, they should make certain people prove they actually understand the technology about which they're suing.

Filed Under: search results
Companies: google

Wait, Can Anyone Explain Why Google Should Promote Other Search Engines?

from the i'm-confused dept

As the EU continues to use its Tim Wu-sian definition of monopoly where "being successful" equals "monopoly," it is has taken the step that everyone expected and has begun investigating Google for supposedly anti-competitive practices with regards to "competing search engines" such as Foundem. Foundem has been on this kick for a while. It has a crappy search engine that sucks and then it complains that Google doesn't link highly enough to them. The whole thing almost feels like it was set up purposely to have an excuse to go after Google.

As per usual, the absolute best response to this investigation comes from Danny Sullivan, who satirically notes that when he searches Google, obviously it had better link to other search engines as the top results:

I did a search at Google today for "cars" and was shocked. Rather than list links allowing me to search for "cars" on Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Voila, Naver and Yandex, Google instead favored its own search results. I’m glad the EU will be investigating whether this favoritism violates anti-trust laws.

He goes on from there. It's worth reading the entire piece, because at the end he dismantles the entire argument of Foundem and the EU. It simply makes no sense. The whole thing is based on a basic fallacy that some companies who failed to actually get the market to come to them somehow think Google owes them traffic. Here's a tip: if your business model depends on getting traffic from Google, you are making a poor strategic decision.

And this is more true today than ever before. It wasn't that long ago that the vast majority of our referral traffic came from Google (the majority of our overall traffic comes from direct access/RSS readers). These days, however, while Google is still high up there, there's a wide mix of alternative sources that bring us traffic: StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and a variety of other sources. Most of these aren't search engines -- but they are massive traffic generators, showing that people find stuff via social means at an increasing rate, and the idea that any business is totally reliant on one company, Google, to survive, simply suggests a poor business strategy. Regulators should never reward poor business strategies, but that appears to be what they're looking to do over in the EU.

Filed Under: antitrust, europe, search, search results
Companies: google

Yet Another Person, Upset With Search Result Snippets, Sues Yahoo

from the sue-the-algorithm dept

This is certainly not the first time we've seen cases like this, but reader LM alerts us to a case down in Australia, where a guy is upset that the Yahoo search results on his name make him look like a criminal. So, he's now suing the company for defamation. Similar cases in the US and the UK have been tossed out, with courts properly recognizing that you can't blame a search engine company for "defamation" because its algorithms summarize other people's content in confusing ways. However, a ruling on a similar case in the Netherlands went the other way. Already, in Australia, the court has refused to grant summary judgment to Yahoo, so a full trial will soon be underway to take on this issue, but Australian courts apparently often look to similar UK rulings for guidance -- so last year's ruling, finding that automatically generated summary snippets in search engines were not defamatory, hopefully is a good sign.

Filed Under: australia, defamation, search results

Court Dismisses Case Against Yahoo From Woman Upset How She Appeared In Results

from the not-yahoo's-liability dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about a woman named Beverly Stayart, who had sued Yahoo over what she found when she did a search on her name. Her complaint was that some of the links advertised porn sites and possibly contained malware, and that this was a violation of her trademark and privacy rights. After the posting, we received a number of comments on that post, and more recently, received a legal letter from the woman's lawyer, demanding that we remove many of the comments or get sued. With the help of Paul Alan Levy at Public Citizen, we replied to the letter, refusing to remove the comments, and detailing our reasons why. To date, we have not been sued over this, but you may want to take our reporting on the subject with whatever caveats, given these facts.

Earlier this week, the court dismissed the lawsuit against Yahoo and denied Stayart's request to refile. The court had trouble with the idea that this was a trademark claim, noting that just because she does not like how her name is shown, it does not create a trademark violation. There are two major problems: (1) she doesn't appear to be using her name in commerce in this particular field and (2) there is little to no likelihood of confusion. From the ruling:

Similarly, Stayart is not engaged in the commercial marketing of her identity, and she does not allege an intent to commercialize. Stayart alleges that her name has commercial value, but it is clear that Stayart's complaint arises from the distasteful association of her name with pornographic images, advertisements for sexual dysfunction drugs, and a sexually-oriented dating service..... Stayart cannot satisfy this requirement [likelihood of confusion] as a matter of law because her complaint explicitly disavows any association with pornographic materials, sexual dysfunction drugs, or sexually-oriented dating services (i.e., Various' website AdultFriendFinder.com). As noted above, Stayart alleges that "in no way has [she] ever engaged in a promiscuous lifestyle, or other overt sexual activities, which she and a large portion of her community and social circle consider perverse and abhorrent." Complaint, ¶ 20. This allegation contravenes the likelihood of confusion, and Stayart pleaded herself out of court on her Lanham Act claim. No one who accessed these links could reasonably conclude that Bev Stayart endorsed the products at issue.

From this, it would certainly appear that the court is not at all persuaded that you can bring a trademark infringement lawsuit against a search engine based on how your name appears.

Filed Under: bev stayart, beverly stayart, search results, trademark
Companies: yahoo

Google Not Liable For 'Defamatory' Search Result Snippets In The UK

from the good-ruling dept

For many years there have been legal disputes over the way that Google shows a short "snippet" of a page in its search results. Some have charged that the results themselves may be libelous. In fact, in a bizarre recent Dutch court ruling, the site that such a snippet linked to was found liable, even though the problem was the way Google's algorithm constructed the snippet. So... of course, there are lawsuits against Google for its snippets as well. However, some good news out of the UK, as a court has found that Google should not be liable for search result snippets even if the content of the snippet is defamatory. The judge seems to clearly recognize that Google is just a search engine, and blaming it as if it were the publisher of such content makes no sense at all.

Filed Under: defamation, search results, uk
Companies: google

Making Results Better For End Users Isn't Acting Like A Monopolist

from the and-again-and-again-and-again dept

With the Justice Department getting closer and closer to going after Google for supposed antitrust violation, we're going to see more and more articles like the one in the New York Times this weekend that tries to highlight the story of a company "harmed" by Google's market power. In this case, it's the story of a guy who runs a directory site that was based entirely on Google arbitrage. He bought ads on Google's search engine to drive people to his directory page, and then littered the page with AdSense to collect revenue from people clicking through. The NY Times presents this as being somewhat harmful, but I have to side with Jeff Jarvis who doesn't see what Google did wrong.

Google arbitrage sites are a problem for the end user. They're based on the simple concept of forcing people to go an extra click to siphon some money away. If I'm looking for a particular site on Google I don't first want to go to a directory -- I want to go directly to the site. That's true for many, many users -- and Google's efforts in punishing arbitrage sites isn't anticompetitive, it's about improving the user experience, which is something that should be praised, not sued. The only problem noticed in the scenario was that the guy chose a bad business model, where he was totally reliant on a single company for both all of his traffic and all of his revenue. He made the decision to base his entire business on a single supplier, and that supplier has every right to change the terms of its deals in an effort to make a better consumer experience. This isn't Google being anticompetitive -- it's Google serving its customers.

Filed Under: antitrust, arbitrage, monopoly, search results
Companies: google