MPAA Apparently Silently Shut Down Its Legal Movies Search Engine

from the we-hardly-knew-ye dept

In 2015, with much fanfare, the MPAA released its own search engine of sorts as WhereToWatch.com. The idea behind the site was to combat the argument that people pirate films because there are too few legal alternatives. The MPAA built the site to show where those legal alternatives do in fact exist. Left unaddressed, of course, were questions about how useful and convenient those alternatives were, how users had to navigate through a myriad of restrictive policies for those legal alternatives, and how terrible Hollywood must be in promoting its legal alternatives if the only thing needed to stop all this piracy was an MPAA search engine.

On top of that, WhereToWatch served as something of an excuse for many draconian polices the MPAA was pushing for all along. By being able to point to the search engine as "proof" that all kinds of legal alternatives to piracy were readily available, the MPAA argued that policies such as "notice and staydown" as well as site-blocking were legitimate pursuits. Somewhat predictably and with a heaving helping of irony, WhereToWatch received multiple DMCA takedown notices for its search results, demonstrating how perilous DMCA takedowns have become.

And now comes the news that the MPAA actually shuttered the site months ago.

The MPAA pulled the plug on the service a few months ago. And where the mainstream media covered its launch in detail, the shutdown received zero mentions. So why did the site fold? According to MPAA Vice President of Corporate Communications, Chris Ortman, it was no longer needed as there are many similar search engines out there.

“Given the many search options commercially available today, which can be found on the MPAA website, WheretoWatch.com was discontinued at the conclusion of 2017,” Ortman informs TF. “There are more than 140 lawful online platforms in the United States for accessing film and television content, and more than 460 around the world,” he adds.

That is all absolutely true today, though it was also true three years ago when the site was launched. The simple fact of the matter is that the site did little to serve any real public customer base. Yes, legal alternatives to piracy exist. Everyone knows that, just as they know that there are far too many hoops and restrictions around which to jump that have nothing to do with price. The MPAA and its client organizations have long asserted strict control over their product to the contrary of public demand. That is, and has always been, the problem.

On top of all that, the MPAA showed its no better at promoting its site than it was at promoting the legal alternatives to pirating movies.

Perhaps the lack of interest from the U.S. public played a role as well. The site never really took off and according to traffic estimates from SimilarWeb and Alexa, most of the visitors came from Iran, where the site was unusable due to a geo-block.

Look, the basis for this effort was a good one: promote legit movie-watching to customers currently pirating. That's laudable. But Hollywood is in the business of convincing the public to do so every bit as much as the public is obligated to buy Hollywood's products. It's not enough to build a search engine to the current unwanted offerings and call it a day.

You have to actully innovate.

Filed Under: culture, movies, piracy, search engine, streaming, what to watch
Companies: mpaa

Court Says Google Doesn't Have A First Amendment Right To Drop A Site From Its Search Results

from the that's-not-good dept

About a decade ago, we wrote about a series of silly lawsuits against Google in which search engine optimizers sued Google because their search engine ranking sucked. All of these lawsuits went nowhere fast. The reason why seems fairly straightforward: it's Google's search engine, and it gets to decide how its algorithm works. Having the courts come in and start mucking with that gets problematic fast.

While I thought those kinds of cases went out of style a decade ago, apparently another SEO firm, called e-ventures, sued Google after the company called e-ventures' site "pure spam" and removed it from the Google Index. This is a level of punishment that Google has been known to slap on really egregious and sketchy SEO tactics. Google takes a pretty hard line on really scammy tactics, and even once famously banned BMW's website for spammy techniques.

Apparently, at some point, Google's web spam team decided that e-ventures was spamming as well, and removed its website. The company sued under a variety of theories, but mainly claims that it did nothing that violated any of Google's stated rules -- and furthermore that Google was misleading in some of its public statements about what it will and won't remove from the web, as well as how it alerts people to those removals. Google hit back with two responses in a motion to dismiss. First, it said that it's protected under CDA 230 for removing content and second that the choices it makes on how the search results are ranked are protected by the First Amendment.

Somewhat surprisingly, the district court has rejected both of these arguments. This is troubling for a few reasons, as we'll explain here.

First: the CDA 230 claim is a different one than we normally talk about with CDA 230. Normally we're focused on CDA 230(c)(1), which talks about a service provider not being treated as the publisher of content from users. Here, no one denies that this is about Google's own search engine and own actions. But Google is pointing to a different part of the law, sometimes known as the "Good Samaritan" clause in CDA 230(c)(2)(A), which says that no provider shall be held liable for "any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material...." This was designed to actually encourage sites to take down sketchy or "obscene" content. Basically, it's saying that if you decide to take down some content you deem to be obscene it does not remove your Section 230 immunity, and it doesn't mean you're now required to take down content other people find obscene. Google's argument is that this applies to search removals as well, and since it's making a good faith effort to remove content it finds objectionable, it's protected from liability.

This argument seems pretty strong within the context of Section 230, but the court doesn't buy it, though it's reasons are kind of odd:

The CDA statutory immunity is an affirmative defense which plaintiff is not required to negate in its Complaint. The plain language of the CDA only provides immunity for actions “voluntarily taken in good faith.”... While the CDA defense may properly be considered if it is apparent from the face of the complaint, that is not the situation in this case. Here, plaintiff has included allegations within its Second Amended Complaint that Google failed to act in good faith when removing its websites from Google’s search results.

But that seems to wipe away much of CDA 230(c)(2)(A). So long as the plaintiff claims that a content removal is in "bad faith" you lose the immunity? That can't be right... but the court says it's fine for now.

Perhaps the bigger issue, though, is the First Amendment claim. Again, the court rejects Google's arguments, and tries to thread the needle carefully. It says that it agrees that Google's search rankings are protected by the First Amendment, but that the real issue here is not the actual search rankings, but rather the statements Google made about why it removes some sites.

While a claim based upon Google’s PageRanks or order of websites on Google’s search results may be barred by the First Amendment, plaintiff has not based its claims on the PageRanks or order assigned to its websites. Rather, plaintiff is alleging that as a result of its pages being removed from Google’s search results, Google falsely stated that e-ventures’ websites failed to comply with Google’s policies.... Google is in fact defending on the basis that e-ventures’ websites were removed due to e-ventures’ failure to comply with Google’s policies.... The Court finds that this speech is capable of being proven true or false since one can determine whether e-ventures did in fact violate Google’s policies. This makes this case distinguishable from the PageRanks situation. Therefore, this case does not involve protected pure opinion speech, and the First Amendment does not bar the claims as pled in the Second Amended Complaint.

This feels like the strongest point the court has, but it still feels pretty weak. Google's policies include some basic catch-alls, saying that it can choose to remove search results based on "policies." That is, it can basically decide what it wants in the search results. And that seems perfectly reasonable. It seems dangerous to think that courts can tell a website what must be included in their search engine.

The court also rejects another First Amendment argument in a way that also seems problematic -- saying that while "editorial judgment" is protected by the First Amendment, anti-competitive motives are not:

While publishers are entitled to discretion for editorial judgment decisions, plaintiff has alleged that Google’s reason for banning its websites was not based upon “editorial judgments,” but instead based upon anti-competitive motives.... Further, a fact published maliciously with knowledge of its falsity or serious doubts as to its truth is sufficient to overcome the editorial judgment protection afforded by the Constitution....

Two thoughts on this: first, the idea that Google is removing an SEO company's websites because of anti-competitive reasons seems ludicrous on its face. I mean, Google links heavily to a number of actual direct competitors all the time. It's beyond reason to suggest that it would target a small no-name SEO firm. Second, again, this semantic setup gives a massive out on the First Amendment. Just claim anything is not "editorial judgment" but "anti-competitive motives" and suddenly the First Amendment issue gets tossed aside?

The court also lets motions around trademark, unfair practices and tortious interference move forward, but they're basically rehashes of the points above. The only count it dismisses is a defamation claim, which was a clear nonstarter.

While the ruling doesn't mean that e-ventures will succeed overall, since these issues can be debated again in more detail as the case moves forward, it seems likely that Google may try to appeal the basis for these denials. No matter what you think of Google as an entity, having courts tell it what can and cannot be in its index seems very dangerous.

Filed Under: cda 230, first amendment, free speech, good samaritan, rankings, search engine, search results, seo, spam, web spam
Companies: e-ventures, google

NSA Makes Metadata (Including Info On Americans) Available To Domestic Law Enforcement Via 'Google-Like' Search

from the easy-peasy dept

The latest report from The Intercept on documents obtained from Ed Snowden (and, yes, they make it clear that these are from Snowden, rather than the purported "second leaker") is about a "Google-like" search engine that the NSA built, called ICREACH, which lets the NSA share a massive trove (at least 850 billion) of "metadata" records not just with others in the NSA or CIA, but with domestic law enforcement and other government agencies including the FBI and the DEA. The database includes records collected via Executive Order 12333, which we recently noted a State Department official revealed as the main program via which the NSA collects its data (and which is not subject to oversight by Congress).

While data collected under 12333 is supposed to be "minimized" to ditch information on "US Persons" we've already noted how backdoor searches get around that. Further, as this report reminds everyone, while "minimized" the NSA still keeps the data, and if someone (say, the DEA or FBI) wants to dig deeper, they can "un-minimize" the data.

However, the documents make clear that it is not only data about foreigners’ communications that are available on the system. Alexander’s memo states that “many millions of…minimized communications metadata records” would be available through ICREACH, a reference to the process of “minimization,” whereby identifying information—such as part of a phone number or email address—is removed so it is not visible to the analyst. NSA documents define minimization as “specific procedures to minimize the acquisition and retention [of] information concerning unconsenting U.S. persons”—making it a near certainty that ICREACH gives analysts access to millions of records about Americans. The “minimized” information can still be retained under NSA rules for up to five years and “unmasked” at any point during that period if it is ever deemed necessary for an investigation.

In other words, there's a decent chance that the FBI and DEA can easily surf through these hundreds of billions of records, and "unmask" people if need be, and then make use of the infamous parallel construction to hide how they first decided to focus on a particular individual or group.

In practice, this could mean that a DEA agent identifies an individual he believes is involved in drug trafficking in the United States on the basis of information stored on ICREACH. The agent begins an investigation but pretends, in his records of the investigation, that the original tip did not come from the secret trove. Last year, Reuters first reported details of parallel construction based on NSA data, linking the practice to a unit known as the Special Operations Division, which Reuters said distributes tips from NSA intercepts and a DEA database known as DICE.

Tampa attorney James Felman, chair of the American Bar Association’s criminal justice section, told The Intercept that parallel construction is a “tremendously problematic” tactic because law enforcement agencies “must be honest with courts about where they are getting their information.” The ICREACH revelations, he said, “raise the question of whether parallel construction is present in more cases than we had thought. And if that’s true, it is deeply disturbing and disappointing.”

And yes, this is "just metadata" but as the Intercept report notes, the NSA's own notes relating to this project reveal just how valuable metadata can be, including noting that it "has been a contribution to virtually every successful rendition of suspects and often, the deciding factor."

An NSA memo noted that PROTON could identify people based on whether they behaved in a “similar manner to a specific target.” The memo also said the system “identifies correspondents in common with two or more targets, identifies potential new phone numbers when a target switches phones, and identifies networks of organizations based on communications within the group.” In July 2006, the NSA estimated that it was storing 149 billion phone records on PROTON.

According to the NSA documents, PROTON was used to track down “High Value Individuals” in the United States and Iraq, investigate front companies, and discover information about foreign government operatives. CRISSCROSS enabled major narcotics arrests and was integral to the CIA’s rendition program during the Bush Administration, which involved abducting terror suspects and flying them to secret “black site” prisons where they were brutally interrogated and sometimes tortured. One NSA document on the system, dated from July 2005, noted that the use of communications metadata “has been a contribution to virtually every successful rendition of suspects and often, the deciding factor.”

Remember Michael Hayden gleefully admitting that the US kills people based on metadata? Well, now it turns out that we "rendition" them on metadata as well. Oh, and contrary to earlier claims about how just a few NSA analysts could examine the metadata, it now looks like tons of other government agencies, including the FBI and DEA have pretty free license to scour the data as well.

Filed Under: dea, fbi, icreach, metadata, nsa, parallel construction, search engine

Russia Plans To Launch Sputnik Again -- This Time As A Search Engine

from the easier-said-than-done dept

Techdirt has been reporting for a while the efforts of the Russian government to bring the Internet there under control. It now seems that it is taking a new approach: as well as banning or criminalizing activities it doesn't like, it wants to compete with them directly. Specifically, it plans to fund a new Russian search engine, called "Sputnik", named after the first artificial satellite, put into space by the Russians in 1957. According to an article in the news magazine "Der Spiegel" (original in German), this is designed to address two problems at once.

The first is the risk that Russia's leading search engine, Yandex, might fall into hostile hands. Yandex currently holds 60% of the Russian search engine market, and makes a healthy $400 million profit on revenue of $1 billion, and so would be a tempting target for a take-over. The danger for the Russian government is that it might go to someone hostile to their policies. In fact, Yandex has already proved something of a thorn in the Russian government's side, since it has not only supported opposition figures on several occasions, but it has the habit of linking to foreign sites that contradict the official line.

That's the second problem that Sputnik is designed to solve. The hope seems to be that in time it will become one of the main sources of information for Russians when they go online, and allow the government to ensure that no inconvenient facts are served up when they search on sensitive subjects.

Of course, it's one thing to talk about launching a search engine that will take on Yandex and Google (which currently holds around 26% of the market), and quite another to deliver. As Techdirt reported back in 2006, similar plans by the French government to set up its own search engine soon fizzled out. The article in Der Spiegel talks of the Russian government providing around $20 million dollars to fund the new project, and notes that this seems far too little to take on Yandex with its 3,500 employees. As well as a large workforce, Yandex also has a healthy bank balance thanks to an earlier flotation on the New York Stock Exchange that brought it an extra $1.3 billion to bolster its already considerable resources.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: russia, search engine, sputnik
Companies: google, sputnik, yandex

Google Is To Pink Slime As Apples Are To Airplanes

from the they're-nothing-alike dept

Copyright maximalist operation "The Copyright Alliance," purveyors of ridiculous copyright propaganda, has really topped itself with a recent blog post. It is trying to compare Google to "pink slime." You know pink slime -- the stuff that got all sorts of attention a few months ago as being a somewhat disgusting looking output of excess beef products all mashed up together and then reused in other foodstuffs. What does one have to do with the other? Well, according to the absolute geniuses at The Copyright Alliance:

Among the reasons I believe companies like Google are so hostile not only to copyright but to other regulations, is that their revenue and aspirations are anathema to distinguishing value (prime meat) from muck (MSM). To the contrary, their business models are literally based on grinding up all content into a homogenous slurry in order to turn billions of clicks into billions of dollars. To companies like Google, torrent sites, and many aggregators, everything goes into the big, digital grinder — a John Irving novel, some bits of junk journalism, a few stupid cat videos, Lawrence of Arabia, several thousand mail-order brides, a hard-news report from Central Africa, trafficked children, an episode of Downton Abbey, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, The White Album, years of scientific research, and of course several jiggling pounds of college chicks shaking their booties at webcams. It’s all just ones and zeroes, right? It’s digital pink slime.

I've now read this paragraph a dozen times. And my only conclusion is the person who wrote it has never used Google or, perhaps, any search engine. Because it gets the story exactly, 100%, completely backwards. It's not reality. It's the opposite of reality. Up is down, black is white, day is night kind of backwards.

The whole point of any search engine is to distinguish the value from the muck. The reason Google became such a huge phenomenon when it first came out (long after people had declared the search engine wars "dead") was that Google did a much better job finding what you wanted. How does it do that? By properly finding the value and surfacing it at the top while pushing down the muck. A search engine that doesn't distinguish the value from the muck is no search engine at all. It's a random website generator.

Search engines care deeply about finding the best value. Hell, just a week or so ago, Google explained how it had made 39 changes to its search in May alone, with the goal of helping people better find value out of muck. There may be all sorts of reasons to dislike or distrust Google. The company is very big, and has lots of info on you, which raises plenty of privacy concerns. But to claim that it wants to homogenize all content and that it's against their best interest to distinguish value from muck makes zero sense. If it were true, we'd immediately see tons of other search engines and do the exact opposite: provide more value and take over the market (just like Google did a decade ago).

I'm all for discussions about copyright issues, but can we at least keep them in the realm of reality, rather than fantasyland?

Filed Under: aggregation, media, pink slime, search engine
Companies: copyright alliance, google

Speech-Via-Algorithm Is Still Speech, And Censoring It Is Still Censorship

from the this-makes-no-sense dept

I have to admit that I'm really confused about law professor and FTC advisor Tim Wu's general position on a variety of topics lately. In the past, I've often found him to be thoughtful and (very) insightful on various topics concerning internet policy and regulations. But, at times, he seems to go off the deep end, such as with his recent claims that big automatically means a monopoly. But, his latest piece in the NYTimes goes way further than anything I've seen before: claiming that search results shouldn't get First Amendment protection because it's "computers" speaking, not humans.

Is there a compelling argument that computerized decisions should be considered speech? As a matter of legal logic, there is some similarity among Google, Ann Landers, Socrates and other providers of answers. But if you look more closely, the comparison falters. Socrates was a man who died for his views; computer programs are utilitarian instruments meant to serve us. Protecting a computer’s “speech” is only indirectly related to the purposes of the First Amendment, which is intended to protect actual humans against the evil of state censorship. The First Amendment has wandered far from its purposes when it is recruited to protect commercial automatons from regulatory scrutiny.

This is wrong. And dangerous.

Let's be clear here: what search engines do is present opinions. They are opinions based on data programmed by humans. There is nothing special in that it's a computer that cranks through the data to output the opinion. Taken to its logical conclusion, Wu's argument is that we should protect uninformed opinions not based on an algorithmic exploration of the data -- but the second you add in a computer to crunch the numbers, that opinion is no longer protected. Contrary to Wu's assertion that this "wanders" from the point of the First Amendment, I'd argue the exact opposite. The First Amendment should protect all kinds of speech, but we should be especially happy about that which is based on data.

Two responses to Wu's piece help highlight this point nicely. Julian Sanchez notes that Wu's argument seems to suggest that any computer generated content doesn't get First Amendment protections -- and that would include computer-generated video games and movies:

Consider an argument for denying First Amendment protection to movies and video games. Human beings, we all agree, have constitutional rights—but mere machines do not. When the computer in your game console or DVD player “decides” to display certain images on a screen, therefore, this is not protected speech, but merely the output of a mechanical process that legislatures may regulate without any special restrictions. All those court rulings that have found these media to be protected forms of expression, therefore, are confused efforts to imbue computers with constitutional rights—surely foreshadowing the ominous rise of Skynet.

Probably nobody finds this argument very convincing, and it hardly takes a legal scholar to see what’s wrong with it: Computers don’t really autonomously “decide” anything: They execute algorithms that embody decisions made by their human programmers.

Similarly, Paul Levy takes Wu to task by comparing his argument to things like university rankings:

As the alumnus of a college that proudly rejects the proposition that the quality of educational institutions can be “measured by a series of data points,” I will take any opportunity to denigrate the Useless News and World Distort rankings of colleges, law schools and institutions of higher education.  But it would never have occurred to me to offer a “speech by computer” theory as a basis for denying that the ranking is speech or that it is protected opinion.  Maybe a stupid opinion, but that is not a basis for shutting the raters down, or enjoining them to change their rating criteria.  Indeed, this theory seems to me absurd — it is not the computers that have free speech rights, any more than printing presses have free speech rights.  It is the media companies that own the printing presses that have free speech rights, and by the same token it is the people and companies who program the computers and publish the results of their calculations that enjoy protection under the First Amendment.

Pretending that Google is a computer that magically generates answers, absent humans regular and consistent input into its algorithm, is a strange position to take, and it really does suggest that we should only protect opinions that don't include a component that uses a computer to analyze the data. I can't see how that's smart policy or anything close to what was intended in the concept of free speech.

Filed Under: algorithms, first amendment, search engine, tim wu
Companies: google

Meltwater Response To Associated Press Lawsuit: AP Is Misusing Copyright Law

from the indeed,-they-are dept

We were somewhat surprised by the Associated Press' decision to sue news search engine Meltwater, because we couldn't see how the AP -- even with its absurdist interpretation of copyright law -- had any case. Meltwater works with companies to help them track news about themselves. While it's similar to a clipping service, it doesn't actually "clip" the news. Instead, just like Google News or other news search engines, it provides a headline, a snippet and a link to the full story. In other words, if the AP's argument gains traction, the AP may have effectively outlawed search engines. That's ridiculous. Among the AP's silly claims in the lawsuit (and there are many), is one that says because users can cut and paste AP stories from their original websites and "save" them in a Meltwater archive, Meltwater is guilty of violating copyright law. Under that argument, so is any email program or word processing program.

Either way, Meltwater has hit back with a response (embedded below) that pushes back on all of these points, explains pretty clearly how it doesn't actually infringe... and also claims that the AP's arguments amount to "copyright misuse":

Plaintiff’s claims are barred in whole or in part by the doctrine of copyright misuse. Through this Complaint and through other means, Plaintiff seeks to misuse its limited copyright monopoly to extend its control over the Internet search market more generally, thereby improperly expanding the protections afforded by U.S. copyright law. Among other things, AP has misused its copyright monopoly by demanding that third parties take licenses for search results, which do not require a license under U.S. copyright law, and AP has also formed a consortium (called NewsRight) with the purpose of further misusing its copyright monopoly to extract licensing fees that exceed what the law allows.

Meltwater also brings up multiple other defenses, including a bunch of defenses highlighting how the AP failed to bring its lawsuit in a timely manner. They also point out that since the AP posts these articles freely on the web, there's an implied license that you can link to it and point people to the content.

There is, of course, also the AP's attempt to bring back the bogus "hot news" doctrine, which some companies like the AP have been trying to revive after it was considered a completely dead concept. So far, the courts aren't buying these hot news claims, and hopefully they get rejected here as well. Meltwater attacks the hot news claims head on with two interesting arguments. First, it claims that Section 230 protects it from any hot news claim. That's an interesting argument, though I'm not sure it really applies here. Separately, however, they argue (correctly, in my view) that hot news doesn't exist any more, effectively, because it's really a form of a copyright claim, and all state copyright claims (hot news is a state law issue) are preempted by federal copyright law. It would be nice to have a court officially kill off hot news as a concept, so here's a chance for that to happen.

Honestly, I still can't figure out what the AP thinks its doing here, other than trying to shake money out of a search engine because its execs remain too clueless on how to run the organization in this modern era.

Filed Under: aggregation, hot news, search engine
Companies: associated press, meltwater

Monster Cable Gets Classifieds Search Engine Taken Down With Bogus DMCA Notice

from the abuse-of-the-dmca dept

It's no secret that Monster Cable is a notorious abuser of intellectual property laws often just to try to get any other company using "Monster" anywhere in its name to pay up. Of course, it's normally trademark law that it abuses. However, it looks like it may be abusing copyright law as well. Reader Archbishop pointed us to the news that the website Jaxed, which is a meta-classifieds search engine (it searches Craigslist, eBay and a few other sites via a single interface) recently had its entire site taken down after Monster Cable filed a DMCA notice against the site.

On Nov 2 2010 Monster Cable filed a DMCA copyright infringement notice to jaXed.com for "infringing" on Monster Cable Products copyrights. For unknown reasons, Monster Cable is upset that images of their products appeared on jaXed.com in classified and auction listings.

On Nov 4 2010 GoDaddy.com has taken down jaXed.com due to this complaint.

We will be working to bring the site back up as soon as we can.

Jaxed is back online now, saying that they removed the ability to do searches in the Electronics category. They're not entirely sure if that was the problem, because the takedown does not say, but the company believes that it has something to do with the fact that some of the searches in that category showed Monster Cable products. Of course, it's difficult to see how this was an infringement in any way, shape or form. First, the actual content was posted to other sites (Craigslist, eBay, etc.). Jaxed is just a search engine. Second, even if the content were on Jaxed, it's people selling their products -- which is unlikely to be a copyright violation (yes, it's possible if they were using official photos there may be a slight issue, but hardly one worth issuing a DMCA takedown over). Jaxed suggests that Monster wanted it to police the site for counterfeit offerings, but as various cases against eBay over counterfeit goods have shown, the auction sites are not liable for any counterfeit goods listed directly. And it seems like an even further stretch to then say a search engine would be liable when the auction site itself is not.

Of course, even more disturbing is the fact that GoDaddy, the registrar for Jaxed, immediately pulled down the entire Jaxed site, over what seems like a clearly bogus DMCA notice. You would hope that a company like GoDaddy wouldn't be quite so quick to pull the trigger. It's also pretty weak that Monster Cable apparently went straight to GoDaddy, rather than complaining to Jaxed first (at which point, Jaxed could explain that they were just a search engine). Unfortunately, we've been seeing more and more examples of companies going straight to domain registrars with their takedown notices.

It's not clear if Jaxed is fighting back against this, but the situation seems so ridiculous, that I'd imagine there are plenty of lawyers who would be interested in helping the site explain to Monster Cable that this is an abuse of the DMCA process.

Filed Under: dmca, search engine, takedown
Companies: jaxed, monster cable

Bogus 'Free' MP3 Download Site Going Away, Blaming Blogs For Wanting To Ruin Its Popularity

from the um,-right dept

Back at the end of August, we noted the ridiculous claims of an operation called "ZapTunes," which insisted that it was offering unlimited MP3 downloads for $25/month -- but with a "free" trial period (but one where you still had to hand over your credit card details). As we said at the time, nothing about the site sounded legit, despite its claims to the contrary. A little digging suggested that the site was actually just a search engine for MP3s, using (at least) Last.fm's database (which includes plenty of song listings that you can't download). $25 per month for a search engine that suggested you could access songs that simply weren't online (musicians who used Last.fm saw their own unreleased tracks "listed" in the search engine)? Uh, yeah, right. On top of that, there were bizarre, unsubstantiated claims about $5 million in funding.

We also noted that the site was already being sued by EMI, and now (not surprisingly), the company has announced that it's shutting down the site in a week, with a bizarre and equally amusing press release, claiming that it was "angry music bloggers," who "despised the attention" the company got, who helped "ruin" the site's "popularity." Um. Yeah. Except none of that is true. If there were actually a site that offered this kind of deal, legally, tons of sites would report on it happily and encourage people to check it out. But this clearly was not such a site. The company claims it will be back, but, given that it couldn't substantiate any of its initial claims, I wouldn't hold my breath for that...

Filed Under: mp3s, search engine
Companies: zaptunes

Search Engine Ditches All Log Files

from the searching-blind dept

There's been a silly, and mostly meaningless, one-upmanship lately in the search engine world, concerning how long the search engines retain log file info on things like the IP address of searchers. Some privacy advocates have claimed that this is a big privacy issue, though the "threat" is significantly overblown. However, it's still interesting to see a Dutch meta-search engine now announce that it's ignoring IP addresses entirely. The site, Ixquick, which has always promoted itself as being privacy friendly, used to dump log files after 48 hours, but is now ditching them completely. That's great, as an option, but it hardly means that others should do the same. It gives ixquick a way to differentiate itself in the market -- and those who really are worried about their IP addresses being watched (and haven't figured out how to use an IP-anonymizing service yet) can go use that search engine. But for those who actually find benefits in sharing some data with their search engine of choice, they should be free to do so.

Filed Under: log files, privacy, search engine
Companies: ixquick