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posted by
Cactus
on Wednesday February 26 2014, @05:30PM
from the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't dept.
from the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't dept.
Fluffeh writes:
According to TorrentFreak, Google is downranking The Pirate Bay's website in its search results for a wide variety of queries, some of which are not linked to copyright-infringing content. Interestingly, the change mostly seems to affect TPB results via the Google.com domain, not other variants such as Google.ca and Google.co.uk.
It also seems that Google may only be downranking searches that are explicitly looking for copyright-infringing content, not searches that are simply looking for The Pirate Bay itself. It will be interesting to see whether this is a backhanded effort to appease the media companies, or a taste of things to come to all the Google domains.
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Google Downranking The Pirate Bay Searches
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Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NecroDM on Wednesday February 26 2014, @05:38PM
Sounds like they're caving in to the pressure from the media companies, since they're technologically dumb so to speak they probably think that this will actually affect "piracy". I say with quotation marks as it's actually copyright infringement, piracy is stealing shit in the high seas.
People who want to download stuff for free will still be able to do so without any inconveniences, so it looks like another futile control attempt by a dying industry.
(Score: 1) by ikanreed on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:28PM
Simple contradiction in your post: if the industry is dying, then it will die and have no content to pirate, making pirate sites disappear.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NecroDM on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:45PM
Good point, but it's not the whole industry that's dying but rather the middlemen such as RIAA/MPAA that want to eliminate the threats to their distribution model, ever since it was possible to copy a VHS they've been hell bent on trying to stop people from sharing content. Fortunately others like Netflix understand that people will copy and share either way so why not make it simple to watch a movie and make some money too?
The problem with MPAA/RIAA is the clinging to a model that no longer makes sense, not since you have broadband internet access, it's human nature to share culture and instead of taking an advantage of that and make it simple to watch a movie online "pirate" sites do this for free and they miss out due to their greed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Fluffeh on Wednesday February 26 2014, @09:40PM
That's not entirely true either though. They simply want to have their cake and eat it. They don't have a problem with other people using their content if they pay for it - such as netflix who is now worth over $25 billion! [google.com] but they try to hammer in that each download is a sale lost.
I agree that they are doing a lot to protect their masters poor business model - but in this case, I would actually blame the actual distributers much more than their guard dogs here. The problem is a business that is simply poorly managed. If the studios want me to buy their stuff, make it fricken available to buy. I have been trying for about four years now to buy a legit copy of Dollhouse [imdb.com] in Australia. It has so far always been "around a year away from release" or so they keep telling my at JBHifi.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:53PM
If the (RI|MP)AA don't understand the obsolescence of their business model by now, it is because they refuse to learn. Good lord, it's been what, 15 years since Napster? They still don't understand that the good ship lollipop has sailed? Netflix and iTunes have even gone out of their way to show them a path to continued relevance, much like you would show your developmentally disabled cousin how to tie his shoes for the eightieth time, and they still insist on this nonsense? Would someone, Google, Apple, anyone just buy the entire content industry with the spare change they have rattling around in their pockets and put them out of their misery already? Buy the whole kit and kaboodle and finally bring the film/TV/music production activity current with technology and the ways the kids are consuming it nowadays.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @06:36PM
I say with quotation marks as it's actually copyright infringement, piracy is stealing shit in the high seas.
Originally, yes. Then came the 1950s and their unlicensed radio stations, which were mostly transmitting from boats in international coastal waters. That fact caused the term "pirate radio" since, like real pirates, they were on the high seas.
Then Napster came along... and "pirate" went from "unlicensed radio" to "file sharing". Note that the pirate radio stations weren't stealing anything, either, they were simply transmitting without a license.
And many (most?) file sharers have embraced the term "pirate". You ho ho!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Informative) by dime on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:28PM
You're missing a step there. In between pirate radio of the 50's and before the internet existed, both warez groups on bbses and the BSA called it piracy. And more from the latter. Informational packets from the BSA in the 80's/90's used the term piracy when talking about warez.
Before... 95 when mp3's came out, there was almost no music in the scene except for the best kind, the midi files embedded inside the bbs ads. So it wasn't music sharing from Napster that linked them to pirate radio, if that's what you were implying.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:38PM
Just my opinion, but I think it's a mistake to embrace the language of the oppressor. That legitimizes his rhetoric, which equates copyright infringement with armed robbery. In terms of moral outrage, a better analogy would be trespassing, or maybe driving with an expired registration.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:17PM
Damn good points.
I've never for one second equated theft with copyright infringement. It doesn't matter what people say, it's logically and linguistically precluded from being theft. It's like trying to argue that the sky is purple and the tooth fairy exists.
At this point though, I do equate piracy with copyright infringement. The old style piracy on the high seas is mostly relegated now to very poor and unsophisticated people that have turned it into an economy, because their country is so screwed up, it can't run a normal economy.
The rhetoric of the oppressor extends far beyond calling unpopular or unwanted (to the old guard anyways) activity acts of crime in such a willfully ignorant and manipulative fashion, but also includes whole hosts of logical fallacies, doctored reports and statistics, hand waving regarding their own much larger and actual crimes against the 'victims', and entirely new and fabricated ontological interpretations that ownership of imaginary property needs to be made real.
That's their biggest and most dangerous lie: Intellectual property is real, it should be owned forever like an asset, and laws and resources need to be created to enforce it, regardless of the serious and quite obvious detriments to privacy, anonymity, innovation, intellectual freedom, and a free society in general.
Calling them the oppressor is like calling Darth Vader a puppy.
They're terrorists, but unlike terrorists, continue to win. Not in little victories against a nameless swarm attacking them, but by laying siege and utterly destroying any environment that supports the nameless swarm. To do that, they will destroy everything. In the name of control and money.
This is why the average person will wake up one day and find that their level of freedom in the real world is non-existent. Their freedoms in cyber-space are non-existent and the interconnection between the real world and cyber-space will be so complete, that being controlled in cyber-space is to be controlled in the real world.
It makes me sad. The Internet made cyber-space such a place full of wonder, equality, innovation, and potential. An unprecedented exchange of ideas and art.
No wonder it had to die.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Funny) by metamonkey on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:08PM
I torrent copyrighted works from my schooner you insensitive clod!
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:45PM
There are times when I consider forming a record label just so I can issue Liner Notes of Marque and Reprisal.
Music privateering is where it's at.
(Score: 1) by iNaya on Wednesday February 26 2014, @11:41PM
Article 12 of the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works uses the term "piracy" in relation to copyright infringement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringemen t#.22Piracy.22 [wikipedia.org]
But I agree with you nonetheless.
(Score: 1) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:43PM
Unless they also violate their "site:thepiratebay.se " convention (I know, I shouldn't give them ideas...), I would flip them the bird and continue to use it...if I did already. I don't really have the need to do much torrenting, but it's still the principle of the thing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:47PM
Crap; my <query> got stripped out of that string.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"