News Corp. Claims Google News Is An Antitrust Violation In Europe

from the good-luck-with-that-one... dept

With Google already facing antitrust issues in the EU over Android (and likely over search as well), News Corp has decided to pile on and to file a complaint with the EU Commission claiming that Google News is also an antitrust problem.

News Corp is concerned Google reinforces its dominance in general search by “scraping” or copying content from publishers to display the results of news articles, according to the person. News Corp alleges that if the publisher doesn’t want the content to be copied, Google doesn’t show the articles in the results at all, the person said.

That News Corp hates Google is well known. The company's CEO, Robert Thomson, has a history of barely comprehensible anti-Google rants, based on a confused (i.e. wrong) understanding of how the internet works. Thomson keeps claiming that Google is "stealing" News Corp content by linking people to it and sending the company traffic.

And, again, that seems to be the basis of the complaint here as well. It's difficult to parse what the complaint even means. News Corp "is concerned Google reinforces its dominance in general search by “scraping” or copying content from publishers to display the results of news articles...." Huh? Google indexes the web. That's what it does. That's how search engines work. Is News Corp trying to argue that indexing the internet is illegal? Really? And the fact that it's built a specialized news service -- how is that a problem?

And then the complaint seems to flip over into a complaint that Google doesn't do enough: "News Corp alleges that if the publisher doesn’t want the content to be copied, Google doesn’t show the articles in the results at all." Um, okay. If you don't want Google to index your content, then how can it show the articles in the results? It doesn't have the information to do so.

So what is News Corp's complaint here? First it's that Google indexes their content... and then they complain that if Google doesn't index their content, they won't show up in search results. This makes no sense at all.

Of course, that's because we know what the real complaint here is: News Corp wants Google to give it money. Whatever you might think of the EU's antitrust case against Google in other areas, this argument seems particularly ridiculous and just seems like Thomson and Rupert Murdoch's sour grapes over the fact that Google is a successful company.

Filed Under: antitrust, eu, europe, google news, indexing, robert thomson, rupert murdoch, search
Companies: google, news corp.

White House Asked Google & Facebook To Change Their Algorithms To Fight ISIS; Both Said No

from the overreaction dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how ridiculous the federal government's view of Silicon Valley seemed to be, in that they had this weird belief that by nerding a little harder, we could somehow "disrupt" ISIS. The thinking seemed confused, and somewhat typical of people who don't understand technology or how Silicon Valley works. It's "magic wand" thinking. People who don't understand technology tend to view technology as a sort of magic -- and thus, they assume it can do anything. And, right now, a bunch of those people in the White House want that magic wand to make ISIS disappear from the Internet.

Buzzfeed's Sheera Frenkel has a great detailed report looking "inside" the administration's attempt to have Silicon Valley help in the fight against ISIS. The main focus of a (not very secret) meeting held on Wednesday seemed to be entirely about fighting ISIS propaganda with American propaganda. As if that ever works. And, from the sound of it, the meeting was equally clueless about why ISIS propaganda is effective, while American propaganda flops.

“They wanted to figure out how to fight ISIS online, how to understand the psychology of those who support ISIS, and they invited almost no one who speaks for those of us in the Arab world, and from Arab communities, who have everything to lose from ISIS’ growing popularity,” said one Arab attendee, who estimated that less than 10% of the attendants were of Middle Eastern descent. “They don’t understand this community. That has been proven time and time again with their tone deaf messages. Why hold an event like this where there are ten white men outnumbering every Arab?”

Instead of taking on the real challenges and understanding why ISIS propaganda is effective (or even recognizing that it's likely not nearly as effective as they fear), the White House officials went for the pointless superficial plan: maybe try to make Google and Facebook change their algorithms to play up anti-ISIS stuff and play down pro-ISIS stuff. This is a profoundly ignorant idea, and thankfully one that both companies told the White House was not in the realm of reasonable:

Tech executives who have met with the Pentagon team told BuzzFeed News that some of their requests have been “jarring.” In at least one case, the Pentagon spoke with several companies — who asked not to be named as a condition of discussing the meeting with BuzzFeed News — about tweaking their algorithms to promote certain types of content. Both Google and Facebook have made it clear that they would not make changes to their algorithms to bury results supportive of ISIS.

“That’s something that is always brought up in meetings. And it shows how little they understand us,” said the Google representative. “This is a pandora’s box we won’t open, because if we answer a request by the U.S. government to feature one search result over another what’s to stop other countries from requesting the same? What’s to stop each country from tailoring the search results of their citizens to their agenda? It’s not a path we are willing to explore.”

Of course, to be fair, Google already cracked open that Pandora's box when it allowed its search results to be impacted by copyright takedown requests.

Even so, as the quote above notes, even suggesting this to companies is profoundly pointless. Not only is it a bad idea for the precedent it sets, it's unlikely to work at all. It's magic wand thinking of desperate people who don't want to actually confront the real reasons why ISIS has been successful.

Oh, and of course, the decision to force Apple to hack into the iPhone isn't helping matters at all if the federal government wants Silicon Valley to "work" with the government on this issue.

“It’s like, you’ve been asked to partner up and dance with the bully at school who keeps trying to trip you in the hallways,” one attendee told BuzzFeed News after the event. “And even though you want to learn to dance there isn’t a lot of trust to build on.”

An attendee from the government side told BuzzFeed News by phone, “We need help, but it’s like, one part of government keeps fucking this up for other parts of government. We can’t seem to get it right.”

We keep hearing from the White House how Silicon Valley has to stop treating the government like an adversary, and the only proper response to that needs to be: you first.

Filed Under: algorithms, extremism, isis, search, social media, white house
Companies: facebook, google

Google Partially Caves To French Demands For More Global Censorship Of 'Forgotten' Links

from the disappointing dept

For a while now we've been highlighting the problems of Europe's "Right to be Forgotten" concept as it applies to search results. The idea is that, rather than a search engine, Europe thinks of companies like Google as creating something of a "dossier" on individuals, over which they should be able to delete old or irrelevant "data." This means that, in the EU, people can apply to Google to "de-link" certain stories that they consider to no longer be relevant, even if those stories are 100% accurate and true. Not surprisingly, given a chance to "delink" yourself from truthful information has resulted in lots and lots of people demanding Google "forget" links about them. Google now has a process to go through these, and certainly has rejected many requests, but it still appears to accept many requests that appear to be obviously bogus attempts to hide information someone just dislikes.

Last summer, French regulators decided that Google wasn't doing enough, and that Google needed to not just censor links on Google's EU domains, but globally. Google responded, noting that this was highly problematic, given that the EU did not have jurisdiction over the globe, and France basically responded with a "shut up, do it anyway."

And now it appears that Google has gone back to the French regulators with a partial solution. While some have said it means that Google will, in fact, start "forgetting" links globally, that does not appear to be the case from looking at the details. Instead, it looks like Google will now try to block based on where Google thinks users are coming from, rather than which Google domain they're using. This is a subtle difference which, in most cases, may not be different at all. That is, when you visit Google from a variety of countries, Google already tries to geolocate you, and will often redirect you to the "local" version of the search engine -- such as Google.fr in France.

Under the current RTBF system, Google removes those links on the specific searches if you're on such an EU domain. However, if you're in France and you force your browser to visit Google.com, the same links would not be missing. So the "compromise" is that now Google will remove the links based on where it thinks you physically are, even if you force your browser to visit a non-local domain name. This will not really impact that many people -- just those who force Google to visit a different domain than their local domain. But, still, it's a further compromise and a move towards greater censorship of accurate link results. Of course, what's stupid is that basically anyone who knows enough to force Google to not use a local domain probably also knows how to use a VPN or proxy to appear to be coming from outside Europe.

Still, the big question now is whether or not French regulators will find this an "acceptable" compromise, or if they will continue to insist on global censorship over accurate information in an effort to suppress truthful information.

Filed Under: eu, france, global search, jurisdiction, links, right to be forgotten, search
Companies: google

Court Points Out The Fourth Amendment Still Protects Public School Students From Illegal Searches

from the expectations-of-privacy,-even-in-a-public-setting dept

Students don't sacrifice their Constitutional rights when they walk through the school's door. Their protections are somewhat diminished but they don't evaporate completely. There are reasons their rights aren't eliminated and those are tied to the operation of government employees outside of the school doors.

A recent decision by an Ohio Appeals Court reiterates this fact and spells out exactly why we shouldn't treat minors as possessors of only a minimum amount of civil liberties. (via 4thAmendment.com)

At issue is a warrantless search of a student's bag under the suspicion that he was carrying a gun. Considering the number of "zero tolerance" policies in place in many schools, you'd think the student's rights would immediately have become subservient to the exercise of those policies. Not so.

A single witness testified at the hearing, a school security officer by the name of Robert Lindsey. Lindsey explained that he is not a police officer but that he is a safety and security officer employed by Columbus Public Schools and works at Whetstone High School. On February 5, 2013, when Lindsey was on duty, a school bus driver approached him with a book bag that had been left on a bus, seeking to have it returned to its owner. Lindsey testified that he opened the bag and was able to quickly determine that it belonged to Polk. However, he began to search further and dumped out the bag, "just to, you know, be precautious, [sic] that's what we do."2 (Tr. 6.) Lindsey said that when he saw Polk's name, he remembered rumors that Polk was in a gang and he admitted he was thinking about that when he dumped out the bag. However, he also testified that he would have dumped out the bag and searched it, regardless of to whom it belonged, because even though there was nothing outwardly suspicious about the bag, it was unattended.

There's your first rights violation. A warrantless, nearly suspicionless search of a student's bag that went beyond the cursory search needed to determine ownership. The single witness showed his disregard for the students under his care by stating he would have dumped the bag out and searched it even without having heard somebody say something about this student possibly being a gang member.

Inside the bag were some bullets. The student was apprehended in the hallway and restrained. He was then searched in an empty classroom by a law enforcement officer. In the bag Polk was carrying with him was a gun. Despite the apparent severity of the situation, the lower court found (and the Appeals Court confirmed) that, while the cursory search to determine ownership was constitutional, the emptying of the bag left on the bus was not.

We agree with the trial court that the second search could have been justified at the outset, "[i]f Officer Lindsay [sic] had dumped the entire contents of the bag in his initial search for safety purposes and/or to obtain the owners [sic] identity." That is, in a school setting, emptying the entire bag would have been an acceptable way to meet the two initial justifications for the search: safety and identification. But Lindsey did not empty the bag at first. He testified he took the bag to the principal's office, recalling that rumors existed that Polk was involved in gang activity, and then emptied the contents of the bag… The trial court was well within its fact-finding discretion to conclude, based on the circumstances, the testimony and its ability to evaluate the officer's credibility, that the second search was based "solely" on rumors of Polk's gang affiliation.

Rumors do not rise to reasonable suspicion, and mere affiliation with a criminal group does not constitute a crime or a justification for a search, even in a school.

Because the results of the unconstitutional second search led directly to the third search, both the bullets and the gun were suppressed. And while it may seem unconscionable that a student who brought a weapon to school will "get away with it," there's a very good reason why his Fourth Amendment rights are being recognized. If they were waived under the assumption that the lowered expectation of privacy afforded to students made the second search constitutional, the system would open itself up to further abuse.

The state argued the exclusionary rule (under which the gun and bullets were suppressed) only applies to law enforcement officers. The court corrects this misinterpretation, reminding the school that the rule applies to all government employees with the power to act on behalf of the state.

In short, public school employees are state actors for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and evidence collected by teachers when they (or a school safety officer) investigate a student to determine whether the student has committed a criminal act may be subject to the exclusionary rule if a subsequent criminal prosecution occurs.

If the court had found otherwise, it not only would have gone against US Supreme Court precedent, but would have given the state a way to route around limitations imposed by the Fourth Amendment.

To hold otherwise would be to revive what was known as the silver platter doctrine for use against Ohio's school children. This doctrine allowed law enforcement agents from jurisdictions outside the reach of the Fourth Amendment to develop evidence through means that would otherwise have been unconstitutional and then deliver that evidence on a "silver platter" to law enforcement officers who were subject to the Fourth Amendment's strictures in order to avoid the operation of the exclusionary rule...

If the evidence they collect in violation of the Fourth Amendment were able to be used when turned over to law enforcement, school employees would have little incentive to respect students' rights, and worse, law enforcement would have an incentive to use school employees as Fourth Amendment-immune agents to conduct illegal student searches in schools.

And no local government can act as though this wouldn't be abused, because it was this exact abuse that lead to the Supreme Court decision: federal law enforcement using local law enforcement to route around the Fourth Amendment restrictions on wiretaps.

To grant the state's arguments credence would undercut this fundamental American right. The court concludes by pointing out that the sting of losing evidence in criminal cases is meant to keep the government honest. It doesn't do its job as well as it should -- and the court notes it's of almost no use in civil litigation -- but the deterrent cannot be removed simply because a guilty person was apprehended.

The Fourth Amendment exists to be enforced, which means providing a remedy. As civil liability (in light of wide-ranging immunity and lack of practical damages) has not proven effective, exclusion, despite its costs, is the available remedy. Without the remedy of exclusion, no practical remedy would exist for Fourth Amendment violations, and "the protection of the Fourth Amendment declaring [one's] right to be secure against such searches and seizures [would be] of no value, and… might as well be stricken from the Constitution."

Filed Under: 4th amendment, columbus, ohio, public schools, robert lindsey, search, warrants
Companies: whetstone high school

Book Publisher Has No Idea How Google Works But Pretty Sure It Could End Piracy If It Tried

from the just-do-the-thing!-THE-THING!-how-much-more-clear-do-I-need-to-be?!?! dept

Here's the stupidest thing on piracy you're going to read today. Or this month. Maybe even this whole holiday season. Rudy Shur, of Square One Publishers, has a problem with piracy, which he thinks is actually a problem with Google.

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.

Yep, it's called the DMCA process. It's been in all the papers. DMCA notices are issued to websites hosting the pirated material. Google also delists search results in response to DMCA notices. What never happens is Google arbitrarily delisting sites just because someone notices piracy exists. Google is also not "The Internet" and lacks the power to shut down websites it doesn't own. It is not Google's job to police the web for infringement, no more than it's Yahoo's or Microsoft's.

Undeterred by this illogical conundrum, Shur heads into the "inadvertently comic analogy" territory previously reserved for Thomas Friedman.

Let me ask you something. 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.

No, it's because the store is selling infringing goods. The store has infringing goods on the premises. It's not because the store is "profiting." It's because of what it's doing and what the store contains. A better analogy would be to point out that cops can't raid a business directory company just because it prints out pages that might contain names and addresses of stores selling illicit goods.

The fact that Google advertises on its own search results pages is beside the point. Ads will be served whether or not "pirate sites" show up in the search results. The ads are not tied to illegal activity. Whether or not some ads are "more profitable" (even if Shur's postulation is true) doesn't matter.

And that's not even the worst part of that paragraph. Shur actually is trying to claim that piracy attracts more people to Google's search engine. Normally, people (misguided people) try to argue that Google directs people to pirate sites. Shur reverses this theory and comes out looking even worse than many who share his viewpoint that Google should be in charge of stamping out infringement.

So far, Shur has been unable to be even technically correct. Now, he attempts to be morally correct.

As a long-time publisher, I’ve been reasonably successful in this business; I also have always attempted to do everything right. That approach has allowed me to work with such companies and groups as Macy’s, the National Science Foundation, Corning Inc., and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, to mention just a few. If Google wants to really work with Square One, I would first ask Google to do the right thing as well. But based on the fact that it would rather hide behind the doctrine of noncensorship, Google doing the right thing doesn’t seem likely.

Whatever. Taking the moral high ground is a terrible way to make a point. It's a way to make a point badly, but it's only going to resonate with those who sincerely believe companies are morally obligated to do whatever any aggrieved party feels they should. It's a non-starter, and it only serves to highlight the weakness of the surrounding arguments.

That's the original flaming wreckage -- all included in Shur's email to Google. What follows is Shur's successful attempt to shove his burning, demolished credibility off another cliff.

I wonder how the good people at Google would feel if one of their patented parts or products were to be knocked off and either given away free or incorporated into a cheaper copycat item. Judging from the Wikipedia entry “Google Litigation,” it seems that the company has no problem going after those it has judged as infringing its patents. I wonder if any of the companies it has sued thought of initially responding to Google by sending the following email:

Since we have nothing to do with the actual infringement of your product, we share no responsibility in making it available to the public. Rather, we advise you to take the matter up with the engineering firm that makes the offending part. In the meantime, we will continue to sell the product until the firm stops offering it to us.

To make this analogy work… well, actually you can't. You just cannot make this work.

All the litigation Shur "cites" (with a Wikipedia reference and no link) is defensive litigation. Very little of it has to do with patents. Google isn't filing lawsuits alleging IP infringement. Google is almost always the defendant, especially in patent cases.

So, Shur's analogy is completely dismantled by the very reference he cites in support of it. even before he tries extending it with his "what if" scenario. Even if we play by Shur's rules, the analogy still doesn't hold. The scenario here -- when applied to Shur's "why won't Google shut down pirate sites" argument -- plays out like this:

Google sues YellowPages.com because a company listed in its pages is infringing on its patents. YP gets itself dismissed from the lawsuit by pointing out that it has nothing to do with the alleged infringement. That's Shur's situation applied to his stupid analogy. And it puts him right back at square one, with Google telling him to contact the sites hosting infringing material, rather than Google, if he wants the content taken down.

This makes his attempt to pound the message home that much more pathetic.

Unfortunately for the publishing industry, under Google’s sense of fairness, copyright protection is not equal to patent protection.

Or, more accurately, a whole bunch of people think Google owes them something, especially when IP is involved. Shur thinks Google owes him a piracy-free ebook environment. In support of his theory, he has all these analogies that only make sense to others with the same mindset -- people who believe Google owns the internet and should always be policing it from pirated goods. (Or terrorist content, people saying mean things, etc.)

And finally, A CALL TO ARMS!

It is highly doubtful that the email response I sent to the Google representative is going to make Google rethink its policies, but if enough of us raise our voices loud enough, maybe someone at Google will sit up and take notice.

No offense, Shur, but maybe let someone else -- someone who actually understands the things they're talking about -- lead the charge. You can't win if you don't even know what game you're playing.

Filed Under: copyright, piracy, rudy shur, search
Companies: google

No, Google Isn't 'Pushing' People To Vote For Bernie Sanders

from the push-it-real-good dept

Every political season, the conspiracy theories come out to play. I personally like the one that suggests that all the high ranking world leaders are actually lizard-people from the planet Bilderburg, or however that one goes. But the slightly more believable conspiracy theories can be fun, too, such as the one that says Donald Trump is a Clinton plant to ensure Hillary wins the Presidency on the theory that not enough American voters are actual crazy enough to elect Donald Trump as president. Which... yeah.

Anyway, the fun aside, it's disappointing to see the mainstream media get in on this conspiracy theory action, such as when the Washington Post runs an article with the headline: How Google Is Pushing You To Vote For Bernie Sanders. The actual article doesn't quite live up to that headline, of course, since accusing Google of trying to get Bernie Sanders elected through search results doesn't make any sense on any number of levels. Still, the piece is about an analysis done by Slate that appears to get things exactly wrong in the most un-scientific way possible.

In an analysis published by Slate, Daniel Trielli, Sean Mussenden and Nicholas Diakopoulos tallied the top 10 search results for each of 16 Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Then they had a crowdsourced team of reviewers rate whether each of these results painted the candidate in a positive, negative or neutral light.

For instance, if the top search result was a candidate's own Facebook or campaign page, that would qualify as an overwhelmingly positive result. But if a news story critical of a candidate came up in the top 10, it would be coded as negative. In they end, they found that "Democrats fared better than Republicans when it came to supportive and positive sites within the first page of results. Democrats had, on average, seven favorable search results in those top 10, whereas GOP candidates had only 5.9."

Ok, so through the method of getting some people out there to Google a candidate's name and then decide for themselves whether a search result is positive or negative, the general trend is that Democrats get one better search result than Republicans. For anyone outside of the group of my conservative friends that gets their GOP knickers in a twist at the slightest hint of liberal bias anywhere, this is a statistical nothing, particularly given the muted sample size of results. It also seems to think many people are going around and inputting presidential candidates into Google and then making up their minds based on search results. An assumption for which no evidence is provided, mind you.

Even the article notes that nothing about this indicates that Google is trying to influence voters.

Does this mean Google is in the tank for Democrats? No. The authors say that the outcome is "an organic, emergent result constituted from a complex prism of quantification involving hundreds of signals and increasingly complex and opaque artificial intelligence." In other words, we don't know a whole lot about Google's algorithm. But we do know that pages that get a lot of traffic or are frequently linked to on other websites tend to do better in the rankings.

That helps explain why Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders fares so favorably in Google searches -- nine of his top 10 results were rated "very pro" in the analysis. The senator from Vermont has a strong social media presence and a lot of followers on multiple platforms. So his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts all come up high in the search results, contributing to an overall positive result.

Left out of this conversation is the fact that Sanders, agree with him or not, is a candidate with a populist message. That helps him in the search results as well, as many diverse groups of people will be discussing him and his campaign, likely all linking to one another and so on. But regardless of that fact, the point is that the premise of the article is exactly wrong.

Google search results aren't influencing voters; voters are influencing Google's search results. Coupled with some personalized results, Google search results are all about the most commonly read, linked, used, links out there. The more positive links about Sanders, or any other candidate, are popular, the higher they appear in the results. Same with negative links.

So, while it's tempting to think the big evil corporation is trying to get us to vote for the socialist (because that apparently makes any kind of sense), the truth is more mundane.

Filed Under: bernie sanders, conspiracy theories, presidential candidates, search, search results
Companies: google

TVEyes Hit With Incredibly Restrictive Permanent Injunction By Court

from the so-much-for-the-fair-use-'win' dept

The last time we checked in with the long-running TVEyes case, the TV monitoring company had scored another partial victory for fair use. The company packages clips of news stories from TV broadcasts and makes them available to paying subscribers -- which include journalists and government officials.

It had scored a much larger fair use win earlier, when the court found that even the storage of clips by TVEyes fell under fair use, despite Fox News' protests to the contrary. A year later, some of TVEyes' fair use victory was scaled back. The court took another look at the end users' ability to download and store clips and found these actions weren't covered under the fair use ruling. Users could privately share clips and create archives only they could access. What wasn't covered was public sharing and downloading of clips.

In order to comply with the court's decision, TVEyes would need to additionally restrict access to its compiled content. The court didn't say specifically what TVEyes would have to change to comply with the ruling at that point. Those instructions appear to have arrived.

An injunction issued by the court contains all sorts of new restrictions, as Eriq Gardner reports.

Here's a list of things that are now forbidden:

Enabling users to download to their own computers video clips of content telecast on the Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network.

Enabling users to view FNC or FBN content by searching by date, time, and channel.

Enabling users from sharing video clips of FNC or FBN content on social media websites rather than by personally directed emails, with further limitations.

Those further limitations?

If a TVEyes client wants to email a clip, he or she can only do so to five or less recipients. The client also has to register their work email with TVEyes instead of using Gmail or another free web email service. Those being sent the clip will also have to submit their own email address to ensure they are the intended recipients.

These new restrictions could do some serious damage to TVEyes, which charges subscribers ~$500/month for access to a wide variety of news clips. Where high-profile subscribers like Reuters, Bloomberg, the White House (yes, THAT one), the Dept. of Defense and others will go if they find the new restrictions unworkable isn't exactly clear, but it's a safe bet that Fox's litigious efforts will see a few of these entities finding the service no longer worth the investment.

And that's not the full extent of the restrictions in the permanent injunction. TVEyes will also be required to create and implement a social media blockade solely for Fox News content to prevent the public sharing of its clips. Any Fox content circulated by TVEyes will also have to carry a warning that the content has not been purchased or licensed by the company and that unauthorized sharing is considered copyright infringement. So, for $500/month, TVEyes' subscribers will now have the privilege of being blasted with anti-piracy warnings as if they were lowly, DVD-purchasing peasants.

This order can be appealed and most certainly will be, as it imposes a ton of restrictions on content originating from a single source. Fox News gets its own new set of rules and everyone else plays by the old ones. The court's decisions haven't exactly added up to a fair use win, because a real fair use ruling would apply across the board, not just to everything but this one particular litigant's content.

Filed Under: archiving, copyright, downloading, fair use, search, tv, tv news
Companies: fox, tveyes

Dennys Rodriguez's Supreme Court Win Fails To Help Dennys Rodriguez

from the sorry,-but-that-Fourth-Amendment-is-for-other-people dept

Dennys Rodriguez took his Fourth Amendment case all the way to the Supreme Court and won. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court concluded that a traffic stop cannot be extended to indulge in fishing expeditions. Instead, it ends when the objective is complete. If an officer pulled someone over for speeding, the stop ends when the citation or warning is delivered, no matter how many favors the officer asks after that point ("Mind if we look in the trunk?" "Would you mind waiting for our K9 unit?").

The court declared that anything past this point is an "unreasonable search." It sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration in light of its ruling. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took another look at its decision… and found a different way to screw Rodriguez out of his Fourth Amendment rights.

It found that the Rodriguez decision (named after the man in front of them for the second time) was all well and good, but existing precedent said the cops could get away with an "unreasonable search" because their actions were "reasonable." Adios, Rodriguez. Hello, Davis.

When Rodriguez’s vehicle was stopped in March 2012, the law of this Circuit provided that a brief delay to employ a drug dog did not constitute an unconstitutional seizure, as long as the traffic stop was not unreasonably prolonged. We thus “repeatedly [had] upheld dog sniffs that were conducted minutes after the traffic stop concluded.”

The magistrate judge, the district court, and this court all determined that the seven- or eight-minute delay in this case constituted a de minimis intrusion on Rodriguez’s personal liberty and that Rodriguez’s seizure was lawful under our then binding precedent. Under Davis, therefore, the exclusionary rule does not apply because the circumstances of Rodriguez’s seizure fell squarely within our case law and the search was conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on our precedent.

No evidence suppression for Rodriguez. The Supreme Court may have found in his favor, but he's going to jail anyway.

Not only has the "good faith" exception swallowed the rule, it has consumed a citizen's Supreme Court victory. Scott Greenfield has penned an imaginary letter from the Supreme Court to one of its unluckiest "winners" that cuts through the legalese to deliver the devastating point of the lower court's ruling on remand.

Now for a little bad news. While you’re going down in history, it’s not really going to do much for you. I know, you stuck it out, made the right, and reached the top of the mountain. Good on you for your tenacity. But as much as you convinced us that your constitutional rights were violated, well, you aren’t going to get the benefit of your hard work.

You see, because you won, and the way cops understood their authority until you won, we give them one free pass on violating your constitutional rights. I know, it sucks, but how would they know you were going to kick butt? I mean, what are the chances, right? So they acted in good faith based on existing law and, since the purpose of suppression is to give them a little smack for being bad boys, there is no deterrence to be gained by punishing them for what they did in good faith.

Rodriguez has won the judicial system lottery: his rights were violated and he's still going to jail, because the police officers who kept him detained past the point of the stop's "objective" were well within the expansive confines of the good faith exception.

The appeals court has "allowed" Rodriguez to "pay it forward." The precedent set by the Supreme Court's decision will (possibly) head off a few unconstitutional searches in the future. But for Dennys Rodriguez, it does nothing. He just had the misfortune of being illegally searched before the Supreme Court decided he'd been illegally searched.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, dennys rodriguez, exclusionary rule, good faith exception, police, search, supreme court

As India Goes After Google, A Simple Question: Do You Really Want Governments Deciding Search Results?

from the just-asking dept

Earlier this year, European antitrust authorities went after Google (hours after EU officials announced plans to harm American internet companies to "help" local internet companies). Google just last week responded to the initial claims, saying that "improving quality isn't anti-competitive." Of course, the more detailed response is still private, so we don't know the full extent of what's being discussed. And, now, it appears that India is going after Google based on similar charges, claiming that it somehow leverages its own position in rigging either search results or putting its own services ahead of competitors above the search results.

Based on the responses from 30 businesses spanning search, social networks, ecommerce, travel and content sites, the CCI director-general last week filed a report that accuses Google of abusing its dominant position to rig search outcomes, both the actual search result as well as sponsored links. This marks the first case globally where an antitrust body is formally raising such charges against Google.

It's a bit surprising to see Facebook apparently take part in this effort, because it can't be long until it's receiving similar scrutiny around the globe for its position in the social networking space. The article is a bit confusing, but from it, there seems to be a mishmash of different accusations, some of which are more nutty than others. The key one -- which is at the heart of the claims in the US and in Europe -- is that for certain searchers, Google puts its own services first, before the "organic" search results. So, for example, if you do a search on something local, it would show you Google's local information (built on top of Zagat's info) rather than a competing rating service. Or, it may highlight Google Maps over some competitor.

At least one company, Flipkart, appears to claim that its own "organic" search results depend on how much the company spends on buying ads on the site. Companies make this claim all the time and there has never been the slightest bit of evidence to support those claims. If any such evidence comes out, then that would be a serious issue, and Google should have to answer for it. However, given how frequently it's been shown to be baseless, it seems unlikely that Google is actually polluting its organic search results based on a company's advertising plans (in fact, Google has made it pretty clear that the folks who handle the search algorithm have absolutely no insight into the advertising side of the business).

The claims about Google promoting its own services (maps, local, flights, finance, etc.) over competitors still seems like a weird one. Promoting those so-called "one box" results, is (as the company has claimed) providing more useful services. You can see why other companies may get upset about it, but is there any actual consumer harm? That seems a lot harder to find.

The only argument I've seen that makes any sense at all in all of these accusations is that Google could present better results in its onebox area if it made use of its own internal algorithm (which conceivably could determine that another company's services rank better than Google's). But as we've said in the past about that exact suggestion: even if Google should make that change, it is really the government's job to determine what is "the best" way to present search results?

I have a lot of difficulty believing that bureaucrats in either Brussels or Mumbai are somehow going to have a better idea how to provide the best possible search results for consumers, than the folks at Google who spend all their time working on these issues. Instead, this seems like companies who are upset that they don't rank well enough in Google complaining, because Google is big. If Google is actually shown to be doing something that actively harms consumers, that's one thing. But all of these complaints still seem to rest on companies (not consumers) bitching that they don't like how high they rank in Google. Well guess what? I don't like how Techdirt ranks in Google either, but I don't go running to the government to complain about it.

Filed Under: antitrust, india, regulators, search, search engines
Companies: facebook, flipkart, google

News Corp's CEO Bizarre Obsession With Made Up Lies About Google

from the stop-drinking-the-koolaid dept

Last year we wrote about News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson's weird anti-Google rant that seemed quite devoid of facts. It was a odd amalgamation of conspiracy theory and outright falsehoods that fit more in the realm of an angry internet troll, rather than the CEO of a media conglomerate. Apparently, Thomson has continued to let these beliefs fester and has once again gone off on Google and other companies much more successful on the internet in a confused and rambling speech in Australia. The talk, focused on the future of the media industry, starts off with a philosophical discussion about China before jumping into an attack on the internet, which begins mildly enough with some digs at internet companies:

Media companies, too, are looking for their bearings. Here we are in the age of the GPS, of relentless, endless tracking and precisely precise data, and yet some in media are wandering aimlessly, dazed and confused, without coordinates and slouching towards oblivion. We are living in the decade of content distribution, which is not necessarily good for the act of creation. For journalists and newspapers are creationists, not in the biblical sense, but in the creative sense – I am fortunate to be a custodian in a company that invests in thousands of creative acts around the world each day, great journalism, compelling analysis, feisty blogs, captivating videos and brilliant books, fiction and non-fiction. The question for this creationist is whether my views are anti-evolutionary or anti e-evolution – already a bit backward and sliding ever more so.

For the distributionists do indeed have powerful distribution channels, Google and Facebook, and pretenders like LinkedIn, which is spam central. None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act. But there are broader issues that are still unfolding for media companies, who are themselves struggling to profit from their news and other content, while the distributionists are helping themselves to that content, coopting and corralling audiences and consciously devaluing brands. The supposed idealism of these companies is in stark contrast to their actual behavior. That Google’s newly conceived parent company is to be called Alphabet has itself created a range of delicious permutations: A is for Avarice, B is for Bowdlerize, through to K for Kleptocracy, P for Piracy and Z for Zealotry.

Of course, this gets pretty much everything wrong. They're not distributors, they tend to be marketing vehicles. And there are all sorts of things that are just silly about this. After all, News Corp. itself has a rather long history of building or buying its own aggregation tools that tend to be a lot more aggressive than the Googles or Facebooks of the world. Oh, but nearly all of News Corp.'s attempts have flopped.

The reality, it seems, is that Thomson is jealous that Google and Facebook have succeeded in building services that people find useful, whereas News Corp. has failed. So he lashes out claiming that they're "pirating" or "stealing" content, and "redistributing" it. But that's not what's happening at all. Google is a search engine, it's helping people find more content. And, as a recent study in Spain showed, when Google News pulled out it harmed the news industry, rather than helped it. It took away traffic and hurt ad revenue.

What kind of person slams a company that increases his company's revenue and increases his company's visibility?

Apparently, the chief exec of News Corp., Robert Thomson.

All of this seems to stem from a simple bit of (willful?) misunderstanding. Thomson keeps claiming that Google and Facebook are somehow "distributing" News Corp. content. But they're not. They're helping people promote it or find it. And they're very successful at doing so, and that's the real problem. Thomson is jealous of their success.

It should be reassuring for news organisations that the distributors have suddenly started to realize that the quality of content is important, particularly as they try to build walled gardens – though it should be noted that the Chinese discovered that even a Great Wall didn’t work. The spammers at LinkedIn discovered that CVs are only burnished occasionally and anyone who tweaks their CV a few times a week is probably not worth hiring. Anyway, they now see themselves as a news distributor, and news organizations who cozy up too closely to them are guilty of techno trendiness. It is patently important to be aware of the trends but a grievous sin to be too trendy.

Whatever you might think of Linkedin or its recent strong push into being a content platform, this seems like a weirdly inappropriate insult for a major media company boss to be making. First of all, I think most hiring managers would strongly disagree with Thomson's suggestion that Linkedin isn't useful as a tool for hiring people. These days it's one of the first places people go. Is Thomson so out of touch that he doesn't realize this?

And we are entering a new phase of development by the big distribution networks, a phase in which they are not only appropriating content but deciding what content is appropriate and inappropriate. They are appointing editors not to create but to curate. And these curators tend to have a certain mindset, a deep fondness for political correctness, and a tendency to be intolerant of ideological infractions. Silicon Valley is moving from the PC to being a purveyor of the PC.

Huh? First off, anyone looking at this with any sense of reality would note that News Corp. has a much longer history of acting as a gatekeeper, greatly limiting what content it feels is "appropriate" for people to see. Google and Facebook are quite different, opening up a much broader sense of content to the world. Are there reasonable concerns about algorithms choosing what content you see and things like a "filter bubble"? Sure. Absolutely. But comparing that to News Corp. of all places doesn't make News Corp. look very good. Remember, this is the same company who turned the tag line "fair & balanced" into a punchline. For the CEO of that company to argue that Google and Facebook are somehow curating content in one direction is... well... ironic.

Of course, what it really comes down to is the fact that Thomson doesn't like the political sensibilities of the people who run these tech companies:

This transition is already underway. The stream of content is often a flow of soft-left sensibility, a stream of content consciousness in which genuine debate is in danger of drowning and alternative views rarely surface. This profound movement is taking place, and without much serious discussion of the social consequences.

Newspapers have always been a little unruly, but they are characterised by public debate, wrangling, haggling, arguing, sometimes passionately about issues and consequences, about the impact on societies and on people. The philosophy, the point of great newspapers is clear. But now we have the exponential growth of purportedly neutral platforms built by e-elites that will be far from neutral, far from objective, succumbing to a stultifyingly samey subjectivity and sensibility.

Again, remember that this is all coming from News Corp.. If he really feels this way, why not just build a competing platform that has News Corp.s' political "sensibilities." After all, isn't that what the company did with Fox News? Why not do that online and see how it works? That's what's nice about the internet. Anyone can build anything and see if it works.

After some more whining about how those darn "lefties" are running Silicon Valley, he goes back to attacking Google over "intellectual property" issues that he doesn't seem to understand.

More relevant to our discussion is the digital divot; the deficit in reporting resources created by the egregious aggregation of news by distributors for whom provenance is an inconvenience and who are contemptuous of copyright. The words Intellectual Property don’t appear in the Google alphabet. Without proper recognition, without proper remuneration, well-resourced reporting will be ever more challenged. When I arrived in Beijing, many a US newspaper had China correspondents – now some of those papers no longer exist in printed form.

Mismanagement played a role, as did journalistic hubris, but the digital age has been hostile to investment in reporters and reporting. Why pay professionals when you have UGC, user-generated content? And why pay when you can purloin?

Except, again, none of that is accurate. Google, for one, seems to bend over backwards going above and beyond what's required by law to appease Hollywood and firms like News Corp., only to find them still wanting more or plotting against Google. And, it's funny that this speech comes the very same week that Comcast plowed $200 million into Vox Media at a $1 billion valuation and Buzzfeed's financials leaked showing a healthy, growing business that's investing heavily in editorial.

In other words: it appears that online reporting is actually doing pretty damn well in certain areas -- just not those where News Corp. is acting -- once again highlighting the company's long history of driving internet properties into the ground.

Also, we'll mention (yet again) the study in Spain, noting that Google was helping news publishers make more money and get a larger audience by promoting stories for free. It takes quite a bit of confusion to spin that as being "hostile to investment in reporters and investing."

It's just factually wrong.

If this is the visionary running News Corp. and planning for its future, it seems like News Corp. is heading in the wrong direction.

Filed Under: aggregators, internet, robert thomson, search
Companies: facebook, google, linkedin, news corp.