Google Moderation Team Decides My Piece About The Impossible Nature Of Content Moderation Is 'Dangerous Or Derogatory'

from the thanks-for-proving-my-point dept

Well, well. A few weeks back I had a big post all about the impossibility of moderating large content platforms at scale. It got a fair bit of attention, and has kicked off multiple discussions that are continuing to this day. However, earlier this week, it appears that Google's ad content moderation team decided to help prove my point about the impossibility of moderating content at scale when... it decided that post was somehow "dangerous or derogatory."

If you can't read that, it says that Google has restricted serving ads on that page because it has determined that the content is "dangerous or derogatory." And then it has a list of possible ways in which the content is either "dangerous or derogatory."

Dangerous or derogatory content

As stated in our program policies, Google ads may not be placed on pages that contain content that:

• Threatens or advocates for harm on oneself or others;
• Harasses, intimidates or bullies and individual or groups of individuals;
• Incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or maginalization.

Huh. I've gone back and read the post again, and I don't see how it can possibly fall into any of those categories. Now, if I were a conspiracy theory nutcase, I'd perhaps argue that this was somehow Google trying to "silence" me for calling out its awful moderation practices. Of course, the reality is almost certainly a lot more mundane. Just as the post describes, doing this kind of content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. That doesn't mean they can't do better -- they can (and the post has some suggestions). But, at this kind of scale, tons of mistakes are going to be made. Even if it's just as fraction of a percent of content that is wrongly "moderated," at the scale of content, it's still going to involve millions of pieces of legitimate content incorrectly flagged. It's not a conspiracy to silence me (or anyone). It's just the nature of how impossible this task is.

This is also not the first or second time Google's weird morality police have dinged us over posts that clearly do not violate any of their policies (at this point, we get these kinds of notices every few months, and we appeal, and the appeal always gets rejected without explanation). I'm just writing about this one because it's so... fitting.

The fact is these kinds of things happen all the time. Hell, there was a similar story a week ago as well, concerning Google refusing to put ads on a trailer for the documentary film The Cleaners... a film all about the impossibility of content moderation at scale. Coincidentally, I had just been invited to a screening of The Cleaners a week earlier, and it's a truly fantastic documentary, that does a really amazing job not just highlighting the people who sit in cubicles in the Philippines deciding what content to leave up and what to take down, but also laying out the impossibility of that task, and helping people understand the very subjective nature of these decisions, and how there's so much gray area that is left in the eye of the beholder (in this case, relatively low wage contract employees in the Philippines).

So those are two examples of moderators deciding (obviously incorrectly) to moderate content that shows the impossibility of moderating content well. While it does serve to reinforce the point of just how impossible this kind of moderation is, it's pretty obviously done without intent or political bias. It's just that when you have someone who has 5 seconds to make a decision, and they have to skim a ton of content without context, they're going to make mistakes. Lots of them.

Now, let's see if this post gets moderated too...

Filed Under: adwords, content moderation, dangerous, derogatory
Companies: google

Judge Agrees: Perfectly Fine For Google To Deny Ad Placement For 'Honey Cures Cancer' Claims

from the quackery-perceives-policy-as-censorship,-refused-to-route-around-it dept

Eric Goldman brings us the dismissal of a lawsuit against Google that's… well, a bit on the unintentionally hilarious side. The lawsuit argues there's a First Amendment right for Google Ad placement -- one that circumvents Google's policies against allowing questionable claims like "Honey Cures Cancer!" -- and contains a request for $10 billion in damages.

El Reg first reported on the lawsuit, filed by a former IBM senior engineer. Apparently tired of the rigorous science involved in his day job, Shajar Abid decided to branch out into speculative fiction.

Abid, who goes by the first name "Shaq" on LinkedIn, claims to have developed "a divine cure for cancer" consisting of "only honey herb and spice." Google, he insists, will not allow him to advertise the product through AdWords.

He is seeking $10 billion for what he believes is a violation of his First Amendment speech and religious rights, for loss of business, and for pain and suffering. Also, he wants the opportunity to advertise on Google when people search for cancer cures.

Needless to say, it's a pro se lawsuit, which makes demands Google cover his legal costs a bit perplexing. In addition to the $10 billion, Abid wants the $88 he racked up in ad costs pre-cancellation to be nullified since there won't apparently be enough money to cover this if he wins.

But he won't win, something readers may have picked up from the first line of this post. There are many reasons he won't win, but going pro se and alleging Google's denial of prime cancer-curing ad placement is somehow a government action is but one of them.

Abid finds it odd Google won't let him claim honey cures cancer. Well, it will, but it just won't allow him to buy ad slots for this claim. Abid could start a blog or Facebook page or whatever, but he won't be allowed to promote it with Google AdWords. Prior legal issues with Google's pharma ad sales have resulted in policies that won't allow someone to claim they can cure cancer with honey, no matter how much they firmly believe it will. And Abid believes honey cures cancer as hard as anyone who stands to profit from this claim can possibly believe something. From the lawsuit [PDF]:

Last weekend on Friday March 31 -2017, i received an email that my site had been suspended. It was against google policies as they have details about selling pharmaceuticals etcs..

I said ok, I will call and tell them, i studied the google rules, tell me what to change.

So the first girl I talked to gave a half dozen modifications to do, including take out "divine cure for cancer," which is my sincerely held religious belief that it is.

But what she doesn't know is I have done an intensive pharmacognosy study as well as other in depth proprietary research.

I feel this was the first violation, obstructing my 1st amendment rights, however the kind and noble judge interprets.

References are cited.

My philosophy of medicine is based on Moses's wisdom. One time Mose got sick, so he prayed to God for guidance. God guided him to a plant. So he went and ate it. Then he was cured.

Also this:

I am combining a systems biology empirical approach based on prophetic medicine.

This culminates (sort of) in a Section 1983 claim, which is reserved for deprivation of rights by the government, which Google plainly isn't. (Or "even under the spirit of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," as the complaint states hopefully.)

The judge points out the obvious in the dismissal [PDF]:

Plaintiff fails to state a § 1983 claim against Google. Plaintiff does not allege any facts suggesting Google is a government actor or was acting on behalf of the state.

And then notes Abid's opposition to Google's motion to dismiss states Google shouldn't even be a party to this lawsuit.

Moreover, Plaintiff’s Opposition appears to suggest that Google is not the proper defendant and that his claims in fact are against nonparty government entities. Opp’n at 3 (“My section 1983 claim should be applied against the US government, due to the gross negligence of both the FDA and the NIH[;] more than 1 year of work has gone into regulation for my small start-up only for FDA to trample my constitutional rights and NIH my civil rights.”). Accordingly, the Court DISMISSES Plaintiff’s § 1983 claim. As Plaintiff argues the FDA and NIH violated his rights, not Google, the dismissal shall be WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND.

There's a Sherman Act (antitrust) claim buried in the lawsuit as well, but the court doesn't like that approach either.

Plaintiff does not allege facts showing Google had a contract or agreement with LegitScript or any another entity that was intended to harm or unreasonably restrain competition. At most, Plaintiff alleges LegitScript was Google’s service provider. Mot. to Suppl. Pleadings ¶¶ 2, 12. But there are no facts showing Google sought to unreasonably restrain trade, let alone succeeded in doing so.

This will probably only confuse the plaintiff, who so persuasively argued Google was once found guilty of antitrust violations in another country.

I have attached proof Google has done anti-trustful things recently and has been punished by the EU.

The court also finds Abid's ads violated Google policy, which states it will not permit pharmaceutical ads for non-government approved products that present themselves as proven remedies for illnesses.

Everything is dismissed with Abid given a chance to amend his complaint to fix its numerous deficiencies. The only exception is the Section 1983 claim against Google, which is so far off base (Google isn't the government) that no amount of amending would fix it.

There's a big difference between feeling wronged and being actionably wronged. This lawsuit doesn't even come close to the latter. At this point, Abid has only some wounded pride and outstanding AdWords bill for $88. Filing pro se keeps the costs down but it doesn't do much for coherent legal arguments. And we're probably all better off with Google blocking ads that claim faith-infused honey cures cancer.

Filed Under: ad placement, adwords, filtering, first amendment, free speech, google ads, honey, honey cures cancer, shajar abid
Companies: google

Our Broken Patent System: Company That Does Nothing May Get Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars From Google

from the that's-not-innovation dept

The patent system is completely broken. Towards the end of 2012, we wrote about how a patent troll named Vringo, using some patents (6,314,420 and 6,775,664), had won a lawsuit against Google. Vringo was a failed ringtone company that had bought those highly questionable patents from the failed search engine Lycos and then sued basically everyone who ran a search engine. Microsoft agreed to settle (with a bizarre stipulation promising to pay 5% of whatever Google finally had to pay), while Google agreed to indemnify a bunch of the others that were all using Google's search under their own. The jury found that Google's AdWords product infringed, and gave an award much lower than what Vringo had asked for.

However, there was a further dispute about how much Google should have to pay for "ongoing" infringement. Google had argued that it had changed the way AdWords worked to avoid infringement, but Vringo disagreed. A judge not only agreed with Vringo, but has now awarded Vringo effectively 1.36% of all AdWords revenue -- which represents the majority of Google's revenue. No one's exactly sure how much, but it's probably in the range of $250 million per year until the patent expires in 2016.

This is silly. There's nothing in the patent that was key to Google doing what it does. There was nothing in the patent that taught anyone anything. In fact, Vringo flat out concedes that Google didn't "copy" anything. It just built its own product in a manner that best served its users. And Vringo, which did nothing at all, may now cash in for hundreds of millions of dollars. For doing nothing.

In a true capitalist system, when a company fails it goes out of business. Patents like this are a joke on the free market. They allow failed companies to sue those who succeed and get hundreds of millions of dollars out of them. They let companies that failed cash in for doing nothing -- for failing in the market place. It's a tax on companies that build something consumers want, paid to companies that could never correctly figure out what the market wanted. It means the companies that improve the world have to pay off the companies that have done nothing to improve the world. How is that possibly a fair or reasonable result?

I'm honestly curious for the usual crew of patent system defenders to explain how Vringo deserves ~$250 million a year for not doing anything at all to improve search.

Filed Under: adwords, losers, patent trolls, patents, search engines, shakedown, winners
Companies: google, lycos, vringo

Aussie Court Realizes That Google Is Not Responsible For Content In Google Ads

from the good-ruling dept

Back in 2007, we wrote about a ridiculous lawsuit down in Australia, in which the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) was suing Google because other companies had purchased ads deemed to be "misleading" on Google. As we noted at the time, the ACCC seemed really confused about how Google worked, and the difference between being a self-service platform/tool and being a full-service advertising media company. While the ACCC ran into some trouble early on (its arguments were deemed "incomprehensible" by the first court) they actually won on appeal. The good news, however, is that the case moved up another level, and the High Court has overturned that decision with a pretty clear statement (pdf) on the basic issue:

Ordinary and reasonable users of the Google search engine would have understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations. Accordingly, Google did not engage in conduct that was misleading or deceptive.

This may not seem like a big deal, but as Ali Sternburg rightly explains, having strong protections for secondary liability is a huge part of why the internet is so useful and innovative. In simple terms, we don't blame third party service providers for misuses by their users, because that takes away massive incentives for the service providers to innovate in the first place. It chills innovation in a major way.

Safe harbors from secondary liability are essential for Internet platforms and businesses, and it is encouraging when other countries affirm these principles.

Unfortunately, some of these safe harbors have come under increasing attack over the past few years, as people who feel wronged go the Steve Dallas route, and assume that if they've been wronged, it makes sense to sue the company with the deepest pockets, rather than those actually responsible. But, when you do that, you create incredible incentives to effectively shut down any open platforms, because the threat of liability is just too risky. The stifling effects are enormous, whereas the benefit from protecting platform providers from liability for users' actions is tremendous. And, no, this doesn't mean that illegal activity is allowed. It just means that liability is properly focused on those who actually break the law.

Filed Under: ads, adwords, australia, content, liability
Companies: google

End Of Bogus Trademark Lawsuits Over AdWords In Sight

from the getting-there... dept

For years, we've pointed to the series of ridiculous trademark lawsuits filed against Google over Adwords, and wondered when it would finally be settled and understood that advertising on a third party site against a competitor's trademark is just good marketing, not trademark infringement. To bring up an analogy, many of us are used to supermarkets that display coupons near competing products -- or where you get handed competing coupons printed out at checkout. This is the exact same concept. It's perfectly reasonably that if you're searching for a certain brand name, a competing company may seek to buy clearly marked advertisements that attempt to offer you a better deal. There's no confusion by the consumer and no "dilution" of the original brand. It's just good competition. Even more bizarre is the fact that these lawsuits targeted Google, rather than the advertiser directly. After all, Google just provides the platform. If an ad is actually confusing to users, then the only trademark claim would be against the company who actually created the confusing ad, not the platform that hosts it.

Back in 2005, with the high profile Geico case, we had hoped that the court would set the record straight on all this, but it chose to punt on the key questions, and Google and Geico eventually settled, which only resulted in a bunch more similar lawsuits. Perhaps the most well known was the one that Rosetta Stone filed back in 2009 (the ninth such case). That case has been kicking around for years, with various ups and downs. Rosetta Stone even went so far as to support SOPA's predecessor, COICA, in the hopes that it would be useful in making Google liable for the ads others placed on its site.

We had thought that a clear headed judge would point out the obvious, but instead, we got a massively confused ruling that was quite troubling in which it was unclear if the judge really understood the issues at play. Given all of this, it's not a huge surprise that Google figured out a way to settle the case out of court. While it probably had to pay a small sum to make that happen, Eric Goldman notes, nothing in what's been announced suggests that Google agreed to change any of its practices. He also notes that, at this point, nearly every such case against Google has ended in a Google win or quiet settlement in which Google's policies are left intact:

Irrespective of the specific settlement terms, ending this case is a strategic win for Google because it takes out the last “major” US trademark owner challenger to AdWords.  Combined with the recent dismissal of the Jurin lawsuit, Google is now down to two pending US trademark lawsuits over AdWords: CYBERsitter and Home Decor Center.  Despite CYBERsitter’s recent intermediate “win,” I don’t think either of the two remaining lawsuits are dangerous to Google.  As a result, Google is tantalizingly close to successfully running the table on all of the US trademark challenges to its AdWords practices.  When this happens, Google will have legitimized the billions of dollars of revenues it makes by selling trademarked keywords in AdWords.

Eric may be slightly more optimistic on this than I am. Having seen so many of these cases come and go, I still expect others to jump in, in the hopes of getting offered a similar "settlement" just to go away. Hopefully one of the remaining cases ends in a clear judicial smackdown against companies who are trying to stretch trademark law well beyond its intended purpose.

Filed Under: advertising, adwords, trademark
Companies: google, rosetta stone

Unfortunate: Appeals Court Revives Misguided Rosetta Stone Lawsuit Against Google

from the can't-we-get-this-straight-already?!? dept

There have been a number of silly lawsuits against Google for the fact that companies can buy AdWords ads based on trademarked terms. These lawsuits are problematic on a few different levels. First, using trademarked keywords to trigger ads isn't infringement. It's a perfectly reasonable use. In the same way that a supermarket often places coupons for certain brands/products near competing products, advertising competitors is perfectly reasonable. Second, even if there is trademark infringement, it should be limited to the advertiser itself, not to Google, who is merely the platform. Even though a few courts had more or less said this in the past, software company Rosetta Stone decided to sue anyway back in 2009. The lawsuit was dumped pretty quickly, with the court getting the big questions right (though it went a little weird on some of the finer points).

Rosetta Stone appealed, and basically got every company who hates Google to join in on the fun. Not only that, but Rosetta Stone even used its loss as a reason to support SOPA's predecessor, COICA, saying that Google is "the gateway for criminals into America."

No, I'm not joking. Rosetta Stone literally said the fact that Google allows competitors to put up ads based on trademarked keywords makes it the (not "a", but "the") "gateway for criminals into America."

Unfortunately, rather than give the company the slap down it deserves, it appears that a somewhat confused appeals court is reviving the case and sending it back to the lower court to reconsider. The reasoning in this 7th Circuit ruling is extremely troubling on a variety of levels.

Quite amazingly, the court actually suggests that there's a possibility that Google is guilty of direct infringement of Rosetta Stone's trademarks. This makes no sense. Even if you somehow twisted things to make Google liable in some manner or another, the only possible liability has to be for secondary liability, because it's not the one directly making use of the trademarks in the first place. It's providing the platform and the advertisers are using the marks. This is pretty basic stuff, and it makes you wonder the technical literacy of the appeals court panel (or why they presume to judge a case where they clearly don't understand what they're talking about).

Another bizarre point is on the question of "intent." The court accepts much of Rosetta Stone's argument that because Google changed its policy over time to allow greater usage of trademarked terms, that it had intent to infringe. While that is one possible interpretation, there are much more sensible explanations that aren't so nefarious. Google stopped allowing the use of trademarked terms early on because it was a waste of time and resources to fight stupid lawsuits like this one. As it continued to grow, it realized that there was no legal reason why it shouldn't allow such uses, and it changed its policies. And, of course, it then gets hit with a stupid lawsuit... and the court seems to use the fact that Google changed its policy as potential evidence that it "intended to cause confusion"? That makes no sense at all. Google knows damn well that if it "intends to cause confusion" that it's going to lose a trademark lawsuit. Why would it ever do that? The company made clear that it expected to get sued, but it was doing this because it believed the law was on its side. It's quite a twist to claim "intent" to "cause confusion" based on that.

Next, the appeals court accepts as evidence of confusion, Rosetta Stone finding some guy who was confused by a counterfeit reseller's site and bought a counterfeit version of their software. Note that the guy was not confused by Google, but by the third party site. The lower court smartly rejected this as anecdotal and properly pointed out that the confusion arose not from Google, but from the other site. But the appeals court rejects that argument and says that the testimony is valid.

After that, the court also moves on to the question of contributory (rather than direct infringement) and bizarrely argues that the reasonable standard set forth in the famous Tiffany v. eBay case cannot be applied at the summary judgment level. This was the ruling that found that eBay was not guilty of contributory trademark infringement for counterfeit goods sold on eBay, in part because eBay made reasonable efforts to remove the infringing content when it became aware of it. This is a reasonable standard, and one that it makes sense to use in this case also, as the lower court did. However, the appeals court basically says that this standard can really only be used after a costly and wasteful trial, even if the court could get around all that by noting the obvious fact that the service provider is a good actor in getting rid of infringing works when it learns of them.

Things get equally troubling when we get down to the question of trademark dilution. The lower court rejected Rosetta Stone's arguments here on a few factors, but the appeals court sends that back too. Specifically, the lower court pointed out that there was no dilution because Google wasn't using the Rosetta Stone trademarks to identify its own (different) products, thus there was no dilution. This is the correct interpretation of the law, because the entire point of the (very new) concept of "dilution" in trademark law is that it can't be used to "dilute" the value of the trademark by applying it to different products. Here, no one is claiming that Google is making use of Rosetta Stone's marks to impart the value of that mark on something different. So the lower court got that right... but the appeals court gets confused and denies this reasoning, instead saying that this is really a "fair use" discussion, which can only be used as a defense, rather than a proactive argument at the summary judgment stage. Once again, that's batty. It only encourages long, drawn-out, wasteful and useless trials where none are needed.

The court did accept some of the more minor arguments of the lower court, but sent back all of the major issues. Hopefully the district court does a full trial and still comes to the same (correct and reasonable) conclusion, but in the meantime, they have to waste time and resources on a silly trial that was properly dumped in the first place.

Filed Under: adwords, competition, trademark
Companies: google, rosetta stone

As Expected, Rosetta Stone Loses Badly To Google In Claiming Trademark Violations For AdWords

from the when-will-these-lawsuits-stop? dept

There have been so many baseless lawsuits against Google for selling trademarked keywords as part of its AdWords program, that you would think lawyers would recommend against even bothering. Google always wins -- as it should. First of all, despite what some people believe, trademark does not give you complete control over the mark. The purpose of trademark law is to avoid consumer confusion. More recently the whole "dilution" theory has been tacked on to trademark law as well, but that is still somewhat limited. Beyond that, if there is consumer confusion in an AdWords ad, Google is still the wrong party to sue. Instead, the liability belongs on whoever created the confusing ad.

While a lot of the more recent such cases have been from smaller companies, a lot more attention was paid to the news that language software firm Rosetta Stone sued Google over this issue last year. Eric Goldman, who's been tracking all of these types of lawsuits against Google, has a detailed discussion on the judge's ruling throwing out Rosetta Stone's case and giving a pretty complete victory to Google. Goldman notes that there are a few problems with the ruling, but it gets the big questions right. Now, hopefully, lawyers and companies will finally start to realize there's nothing illegal about Google selling ads on your trademarked terms.

Filed Under: adwords, trademark
Companies: google, rosetta stone

Rescuecom Declares Victory... In Dropping Its Lawsuit Against Google

from the some-victory dept

We've covered some of Rescuecom's bizarre lawsuit against Google for selling Adwords based on Rescuecom's trademarks. The lawsuit has been going on for a while, without Rescuecom getting very far. At almost every turn it was pointed out that what was happening was not trademark infringement. Finally, after many years, Rescuecom has given up and dropped the case... but in the process it's declaring "victory" in the lawsuit. Seriously. The explanation for the "victory"? That Google now lets trademark holders remove trademarks from the "keyword suggestion" tool. Only problem? Google enabled this in 2005.

Basically, the more likely story is that Rescuecom knew it was going to lose and just gave up and declared victory.

Oh, and also, just a few months ago, we noted that Rescuecom was on the other side of nearly an identical lawsuit, in which it was buying ads on Best Buy trademarks (hypocrisy much?). Being involved in two lawsuits at the same time where you're making totally contradicting arguments isn't likely to end well. So it seems likely that given the two lawsuits, and the likelihood of losing the Google one, Rescuecom threw in the towel on that one and then pretended it "won" for the sake of a press release. Based on that logic, can we declare "victory" in our decision not to sue Rescuecom for insulting our intelligence?

Filed Under: ads, adwords, liability, trademark
Companies: google, rescuecom

AdWords Collections Attempt By Google Mutates Into Antitrust Lawsuit

from the didn't-expect-that,-did-you.. dept

Last year, we wrote about an odd antitrust lawsuit against Google by a company named TradeComet. The lawsuit was a joke. Basically, the company was an arbitrage player that tried to create spam-like pages that people would find on Google searches, and would make money by then getting people to click on pay-per-click ad links to get where they really wanted to go. Google properly classifies sites like this as spam, and its ranking methodology punished the site accordingly. It had nothing to do with being "anti-competitive," it was just Google making sure its search results were better for users. That lawsuit is basically in a holding pattern right now, as the judge considers Google's motion to dismiss.

However, a similar lawsuit has popped up, and it's a bit strange. Eric Goldman has all the murky details, of how a shopping search engine named myTriggers apparently got a line of credit from Google and used it to buy a bunch of AdWords search ads to drive traffic to its site (and then raised money based on the resulting traffic). Once again, Google rejiggered its algorithm, and suddenly the ads for myTriggers were a lot more expensive (by one to two orders of magnitude). The company couldn't pay its bill to Google, so Google hired a local lawyer (in Ohio) and went to court to try to get myTriggers to pay the $335,000 it owed. Simple enough.

Except that myTriggers returned fire by claiming antitrust violations by Google, and even went out and hired three separate lawfirms, including (conspiracy theory time) the same law firm that represented TradeComet and which is closely connected to Microsoft. As Goldman notes:

I am struggling to make sense of myTriggers' litigation choices. Assuming myTriggers even has the money, writing a $335k check to Google (and I bet Google would have taken less!) is almost assuredly cheaper than paying three law firms to mount an antitrust assault on a $20B/year behemoth. Assuming that myTriggers wants to maximize profits, then either (1) myTriggers thinks its odds are good enough that it will win AND make enough money to pay the 7 lawyers on the counterclaim's signature page plus their teams, or (2) the law firms struck an unbelievably sweet deal on fees.

Goldman also notes that Google probably wishes it hadn't filed a claim in a local Ohio state court, as the antitrust battle might now need to be fought there, rather than in a friendlier federal court closer to home:

Whatever the case, I suspect the antitrust claims caught Google flat-footed. A simple and low-stakes collections matter has blown up into a potentially significant lawsuit in an undesirable forum. Google chose Ohio state court for the collections matter despite its AdWords contract, so now it will have a tough time extricating itself from that court. But I suspect it would rather have an antitrust case in federal court, not state court--often (but not always) federal judges are more sophisticated than state judges and less susceptible to hometown bias. And I'm sure Google would rather fight antitrust claims on one of the coasts than in the Rust Belt, especially if myTriggers argues that Google's evilness cost Ohioans jobs. Google probably didn't mean to offer battle in this venue, but someone did a really good job of seizing the opportunity and forcing Google to fight the battle in a suboptimal setting.

As with the TradeComet case, the antitrust claim from myTriggers sounds incredibly weak, and it probably should be thrown out, but given the uncertainties of it being filed in the local court, Google may have to take it a bit more seriously. And, of course, the possibility of a secret Microsoft connection makes this even more interesting. Still, I can't see this getting that far in the long run. I hope that the judge recognizes the basic weaknesses of the case: here's a company that relied entirely on a single supplier who had every right to change its policies if it felt it didn't deliver a good customer experience, and it did so. myTriggers now seems to be suing as some sort of sour grapes for its own business failings.

Filed Under: adwords, antitrust, ohio
Companies: google, microsoft, mytriggers, tradecomet

Is Google Banning AdSense On Sites It Thinks Have Infringing Content?

from the oddities dept

Thomas O'Toole points us to yet another issue with Google customer service, where an author who holds the copyright on his own books published them online but was denied the ability to put AdSense on the site, after Google told him it had found "it contains copyrighted material." Of course, this makes no sense. Nearly every website "contains copyrighted material," because any new creative content placed in a fixed form -- such as a website -- is automatically covered by copyright. What I'm guessing Google meant (even though it got it wrong) was that it thought the site contained infringing or unauthorized copyrighted content -- though, if that's the case, that's what it should have said.

And, once again highlighting Google's communication problem, the rejection came from an email address called "noreply," making it difficult for the author to get clarification. He did eventually get Google to "resolve" the issue, but Google's overall policy on the matter is not explained at all. Does Google have an official policy where its AdSense team tries to determine if content on a website is infringing? If so, do they have an official dispute process? Does the AdSense team take into account fair use? Google has, generally speaking, been very good on issues of copyright and fair use, but this particular policy seems rather strange.

Filed Under: adwords, communications, copyright, infringing
Companies: google