What would happen if the pirate bay came up #1 for "movies" in Google?

[signupdamnit]

Or if the Pirate bay came up #1 for the name of a movie like Hurt Locker. Do you think Google would get sued or get pressure from the government?

So go do a search for "porn" and take a look at who comes up. Why are some industries protected from this while others aren't?

[Agent 488]

number one for "documentaries" is a pirate site. what are you trying to get at here?

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

number one for "documentaries" is a pirate site. what are you trying to get at here?

Are you sure that's stolen content? It doesn't look that way to me at all...but I'm ignorant of that site.

[Agent 488]

Originally Posted by Robbie

Are you sure that's stolen content? It doesn't look that way to me at all...but I'm ignorant of that site.

i doubt the producers of the docs are getting any cut of the revenue from that site.

also looking at the searches for movie related keywords and most of the big ones are for "free movies online" and shit like that.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

number one for "documentaries" is a pirate site. what are you trying to get at here?

Documentaries are a little different. Many actually are public domain and often the authors don't mind distribution.

What do you think I am getting at?

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=porn
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=porn+movies

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=movies
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=film
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=dvds
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=hurt+locker

Why are sites who heavily host copyrighted material dominating the first page of key industry terms? If Google truly is tweaking in instances of abuse of copyright content then shouldn't a lot of these guys be de-listed or brought down as is done in other industries?

Don't tell me the MPAA would tolerate a bunch of torrent sites coming up on the first page for "movies" and "film".

[TeenCat]

and now who is guilty?

[signupdamnit]

Seems like a question to ask Mr. Cutts and perhaps congress. It's too bad the industry is seen as a dirty little secret or else it would be easier to force some action. Then again with governmental attention perhaps some pushing from major parties just might get some action from Google due to fear?

[lagcam]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

........Why are sites who heavily host copyrighted material dominating the first page of key industry terms? If Google truly is tweaking in instances of abuse of copyright content then shouldn't a lot of these guys be de-listed as is done in other industries?

Don't tell me the MPAA would tolerate a bunch of torrent sites coming up on the first page for "movies" and "film".

It is a valid question. The search engines and google especially, could easily delist them and their traffic (and more importantly their flow of new convertees) would reduce significantly.

Somebody get google on the phone.

[Agent 488]

as long as the sites comply with dmca's they are legal.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

as long as the sites comply with dmca's they are legal.

None of the torrent sites are actually hosting movies. Yet they aren't permitted to be in the top spots for terms such as "movies" or "films". Nor is rapidshare and such sites allowed to be at the top for the name of a major movie (go ahead and find one). Yet outside of a few sites like imdb and wikipedia, we all know these sites are the most often linked to and very popular. It seems to me there has been some manual tweaking in the results to satisfy the movie industry. I ask why not porn as well? Why isn't the pirate bay number 1 for movies or even on the first few pages? Clearly it is popular and often linked to with relevant anchors.

[Machete_]

what would happen if tubes came up #1 for "porn" in Google?

oh wait...

[Agent 488]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

None of the torrent sites are actually hosting movies. Yet they aren't permitted to be in the top spots for terms such as "movies" or "films". Nor is rapidshare and such sites allowed to be at the top for the name of a major movie (go ahead and find one). Yet outside of a few sites like imdb and wikipedia, we all know these sites are the most often linked to and very popular. It seems to me there has been some manual tweaking in the results to satisfy the movie industry. I ask why not porn as well? Why isn't the pirate bay number 1 for movies or even on the first few pages? Clearly it is popular and often linked to with relevant anchors.

what do you mean "permitted?"

for a generic term like "movies" of course the results will be filled with authority sites like wikipedia and imbd. but all the other big movie search phrases like "watch movies online" are filled with pirate sites.

if there were pirate sites removed there would be a chilling effects notice on the page anyway.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Google has safe harbor.

Until put on notice of listing copyright infringing websites ? they have the affirmative defense of their results being those of a computer algorithm ...

.

[INever]

This is actually the crux of the entire "problem".

Google is an engine of "policy", not a search engine.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by INever

This is actually the crux of the entire "problem".

Google is an engine of "policy", not a search engine.

Yes. And "porn" is one of the most searched for terms yet 80% of the sites on the first page host stolen content on beyond 25% of their sites causing substantial damage to others in the adult industry.

Google has safe harbor.

Until put on notice of listing copyright infringing websites ? they have the affirmative defense of their results being those of a computer algorithm ...

Why isn't Pirate Bay on the first couple pages for "movies" or "film" ? The CTR has to be high. Obviously it's free. I think the answer is likely that the results have been manually adjusted to appease organizations such as the MPAA. The same happened with the instant search results in order to appease such parties.

[borked]

Originally Posted by lagcam

It is a valid question. The search engines and google especially, could easily delist them and their traffic (and more importantly their flow of new convertees) would reduce significantly.

Somebody get google on the phone.

No they can't... blacklisting someone could be seen as 'promoting another', which isn't allowed under FairPlay? rules n regulations. Google has denied the existence of blacklists and whitelists, categorically stating that their algo will demote sites if they are found to fall foul of Google rules, but they have denied the existence of any manual blacklist/whitelist.

They are now very much under the spotlight for this

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by borked

No they can't... blacklisting someone could be seen as 'promoting another', which isn't allowed under FairPlay? rules n regulations. Google has denied the existence of blacklists and whitelists, categorically stating that their algo will demote sites if they are found to fall foul of Google rules, but they have denied the existence of any manual blacklist/whitelist.

They are now very much under the spotlight for this

But they DID essentially blacklist certain sites (or more accurately terms in an indirect way) with their instant search results. It's not quite the same thing but still it should be significant.

[CaptainHowdy]

Someone will surely unplug the internet ...

[Agent 488]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

Yes. And "porn" is one of the most searched for terms yet 80% of the sites on the first page host stolen content on beyond 25% of their sites causing substantial damage to others in the adult industry.



Why isn't Pirate Bay on the first couple pages for "movies" or "film" ? The CTR has to be high. Obviously it's free. I think the answer is likely that the results have been manually adjusted to appease organizations such as the MPAA. The same happened with the instant search results in order to appease such parties.

you have no clue how google works, you are engaging in fantasy wish fulfillment in regards to the current state of technology, society and the market. get a grip.

[donkevlar]

Next we should take bad neighborhoods off of maps!

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

you have no clue how google works, you are engaging in fantasy wish fulfillment in regards to the current state of technology, society and the market. get a grip.

Well then why don't you educate us if you are sure that you know better than I do, Agent 488? Based upon patterns conclusions can be drawn. It may not be 100% but we can approach that direction.

There are some interesting patterns:

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&h...bay.org+movies - About 965,000 results
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&h...ulu.com+movies - About 260,000 results (Hulu comes up within the top 20 for "movies")

None of the top results (within the top 50 and probably top 100) for "movies" or "films" seem to have any pirate sites at all. They are all major media company sites, local guide sites with information on local movies [these seem to come up first - which the MPAA probably loves in order to encourage people to go to theaters), or authority sites such as IMDB, rotten tomatoes, or wikipedia. It's as if they are hand picked and selected or at least subject to whitelisting and blacklisting. Contrast this to general porn terms which are often dominated by high CTR pirate sites. I would say there is strong evidence that there is differentiation based on industry with a strong case for some results being hand picked.

In the end isn't it one hell of a coincidence that thepiratebay doesn't rank high for main media industry terms such as movies? Surely you have to at least concede that.

[Barry-xlovecam]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

[W]hy isn't Pirate Bay on the first couple pages for "movies" or "film" ? The CTR has to be high. Obviously it's free. I think the answer is likely that the results have been manually adjusted to appease organizations such as the MPAA. The same happened with the instant search results in order to appease such parties.

Some manual editing most likely occurs.

With respect to copyright infringing sites of concern to the MPAA, I would not be surprised if Google has some preemptive policy. That would be legally prudent — the large movie studios litigate — that is a given.

[INever]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

Some manual editing most likely occurs.

With respect to copyright infringing sites of concern to the MPAA, I would not be surprised if Google has some preemptive policy. That would be legally prudent ? the large movie studios litigate ? that is a given.

Google plays in the big leagues and gives money to politicians, gets in bed with the 3 letter agencies, etc.

Porn could have had a place at the table but the people making the big money chose to buy the best Ferrari for themselves.....instead of the mid-range Ferrari, and paying off some politicos and getting in the game.

So the result: GAME OVER.

[kane]

Originally Posted by INever

Google plays in the big leagues and gives money to politicians, gets in bed with the 3 letter agencies, etc.

Porn could have had a place at the table but the people making the big money chose to buy the best Ferrari for themselves.....instead of the mid-range Ferrari, and paying off some politicos and getting in the game.

So the result: GAME OVER.

I disagree. I think that porn could have spent all the money in the world and still never gotten a seat at the table. Here is why: Conservatives are mostly morally opposed to porn. Any conservative senator of congressmen who took porn money would be seen as pro-porn and people wouldn't vote for him. It would be just like being a pro-life conservative, you would lose your job. Liberals might be more likely to take the money, but their conservative opponents would be quick to point out that they were taking money from evil porn which destroys families and harms children and it would cost liberals votes and rally the conservatives around their candidate so they could beat the liberal. An affiliation with porn would be a death sentence to just about any senator or congressman short of a very few who hail from ultra-liberal parts of the country and even they would be nervous.

There is also no real upside to helping porn while they are in office. Many of these elected officials take money from companies and do them favors so that when they get out of office they can get jobs sitting on their boards of directors or the companies will pay them extravagant amounts of money to come give speeches or they will make them the CEO of their company etc. The big payoff is often after they leave office. There no afterlife in porn in for these people so the upside of the risk they would take is very limited.

[kane]

As for the topic in this thread. You can take just about any movie name and add the word torrent on the end when you search and sites like the pirate bay are at the top or near the top for all of them even movies that are still in theaters. For example the movie The Lincoln Lawyer opened in theaters today. Putting the phrase The Lincoln Lawyer torrent into google shows the pirate bay as #3. they have the movie with 33 seeders and the movie hasn't even been out 24 hours.

In short, Google doesn't care. After all, they bought YouTube knowing that it was likely built up with and packed full of illegal copyrighted material. Google wants their search terms to return to you what you are looking for. If you are looking for torrents of movies, that is what they are going to give you.

[Barry-xlovecam]

@Kane

I have to disagree with the above to some extent;

Google has lost some major court decisions ( See GFY post ) particularly in the EU and its courts.

I guess "proof of concept" would be doing that 'Lincoln Lawyer torrent' search again Monday and see what you get ... If that result has not been manually edited, Google will just fall-back to their position that the result was just chosen by a computer program and if legally challenged on this ? assert the "law of stupidity." In other words, there is no law against being stupid (we could not build enough jail cells).

They claim that they do not edit their algorithm's chosen results. So, there is no "mia culpa." Of course this is a farce ? Google designed the algorithm that determined the result, did they not?

Classic Catch-22 ...

[kane]

Originally Posted by Barry-xlovecam

@Kane

I have to disagree with the above to some extent;

Google has lost some major court decisions ( See GFY post ) particularly in the EU and its courts.

I guess "proof of concept" would be doing that 'Lincoln Lawyer torrent' search again Monday and see what you get ... If that result has not been manually edited, Google will just fall-back to their position that the result was just chosen by a computer program and if legally challenged on this ? assert the "law of stupidity." In other words, there is no law against being stupid (we could not build enough jail cells).

They claim that they do not edit their algorithm's chosen results. So, there is no "mia culpa." Of course this is a farce ? Google designed the algorithm that determined the result, did they not?

Classic Catch-22 ...

I guess that is part of the beauty of being a company like Google is that you can always claim it was just the computer system indexing and that human eyes didn't see the result and therefore didn't edit it. Like you say, claim stupidity.

I doubt they will manually edit it, like I said you can enter just about any movie title with the word torrent on the end of it and get a result from one of the bigger torrent sites. That said, I won't be surprised if somewhere down the road there are laws changed/passed that make it more difficult for search engines to just list sites that are clearly listing copyrighted material without permission.

[plsureking]

Originally Posted by kane

In short, Google doesn't care. After all, they bought YouTube knowing that it was likely built up with and packed full of illegal copyrighted material. Google wants their search terms to return to you what you are looking for. If you are looking for torrents of movies, that is what they are going to give you.

yep that's all there is to it.

what difference is it to Google if their results make a couple hundred paysites fail? they got the search traffic - which is their job. now everybody go do your job of getting better page rank than the torrent sites.

[Jakez]

They DO have a whitelist and have admitted it, there was a thread here the other day about it. The example they gave said the filter looks for sites/domains with 'sex' in it and labels them as adult, but sites like essex.com are put on a whitelist so that the filter doesn't catch them as adult and block them for people with safe search on.

So why would The Pirate Bay be listed high for "movies"? Do they have thousands of sites linking them with the anchor "movies"? Probably not, but sites like Pornhub do have thousands of sites linking them with "porn" and "free porn". There are better more relevant sites to list if you are simply searching for "movies". which is why movies.com and fandango and imdb are all the top results, because they are about MOVIES. Not downloading or watching them. Search for "watch movies" or "download movies" and you will see plenty of pirate sites.

[garce]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

Or if the Pirate bay came up #1 for the name of a movie like Hurt Locker. Do you think Google would get sued or get pressure from the government?

So go do a search for "porn" and take a look at who comes up. Why are some industries protected from this while others aren't?

It would just be business as usual.

[Relentless]

If google delisted free porn it would be about 12 hours before someone else announced an engine that continues to list free porn.
Google would lose some market share, free porn would not...

I'm against pirated content in any form, but the more neutral google's results remain the better it is for them and everyone else in the long run.

[Agent 488]

if your theory was true why would there be lobbying for it?

http://searchengineland.com/new-us-p...gle-bing-68247

[INever]

Originally Posted by Relentless

If google delisted free porn it would be about 12 hours before someone else announced an engine that continues to list free porn.
Google would lose some market share, free porn would not...

I'm against pirated content in any form, but the more neutral google's results remain the better it is for them and everyone else in the long run.

Google's result "appear" neutral but they are not.

That is the "trick".

You can even pay for organic results.

[seeandsee]

google is algoritam, not personal fucker posting it

[INever]

So I search for one of my domains the way a surfer would and does my domain come up #1 in google?

No, a password sharing site does, and the URL is not even on page 1.

I'm disgusted.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

if your theory was true why would there be lobbying for it?

http://searchengineland.com/new-us-p...gle-bing-68247

Nice link and a good question. Thank you for sharing it. I will have to research this further but one thing which immediately comes to mind is that perhaps it is occurring to a limited degree already but it is that the media organizations do not believe it is yet to an acceptable level. For example they may not want TPB to rank at all on terms such as "Hurt locker torrent".

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by seeandsee

google is algoritam, not personal fucker posting it

Actually that is likely only true to a limited extent. There probably is some manual adjustments made and I believe Google has admitted to this. Even so the algorithms are written by programmers with certain goals in mind.

I personally think it is dangerous to demand Google make such adjustments. However if it is being done for the mainsteam media industry then I do not see how it is justifiable that their industry alone receives special protection from piracy.

[Agent 488]

Originally Posted by signupdamnit

Nice link and a good question. Thank you for sharing it. I will have to research this further but one thing which immediately comes to mind is that perhaps it is occurring to a limited degree already but it is that the media organizations do not believe it is yet to an acceptable level. For example they may not want TPB to rank at all on terms such as "Hurt locker torrent".

if it is happening why would they ask?

jakez has the best post in this thread about the topic. sum it up.

[INever]

If you are a Senator you might get an offer to sit on the board of Miramax when you retire. Doubt a Senator wants to retire into a job at Vivid. That explains part of the problem.

Promoting a pirate or theft site (determined by number of infringement filings) would have to be made illegal. Then it's ok to manually remove and filter.

[INever]

They lost but garogyle had the book publishers tied up in litigation for 6 fucking years.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/us-judge-re...33304-879.html

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Jakez

So why would The Pirate Bay be listed high for "movies"? Do they have thousands of sites linking them with the anchor "movies"? Probably not, but sites like Pornhub do have thousands of sites linking them with "porn" and "free porn". There are better more relevant sites to list if you are simply searching for "movies". which is why movies.com and fandango and imdb are all the top results, because they are about MOVIES. Not downloading or watching them. Search for "watch movies" or "download movies" and you will see plenty of pirate sites.

Hmm. This is certainly possible however I still note some oddities. For example right now for me "www.youtube.com/movies" is ranking #6 for the term "movies". Do more peple really link to Youtube with the anchor text "movies" than the TPB? Hulu is #9 for the same term. My gut tells me there is more going on rather than merely the difference in the anchor text.

Originally Posted by Agent 488

if it is happening why would they ask?

jakez has the best post in this thread about the topic. sum it up.

Perhaps it is going on somewhat however the movie industry is not convinced that enough of it is being done. Maybe they want more than Google is willing to do currently. Seems logical.

Originally Posted by INever

So I search for one of my domains the way a surfer would and does my domain come up #1 in google?

No, a password sharing site does, and the URL is not even on page 1.

I'm disgusted.

Did you search for your site title? It's unusual that you wouldn't come up first unless it is a competitive term or you were under some sort of penalty or ban. This is another issue though in addition to the general main terms within the industry such as "porn" and "free porn".

[Agent 488]

the sites that come up for "movies" are authority sites that will take the top 1o without any manual intervention. study seo more than conspiracies.

[signupdamnit]

Originally Posted by Agent 488

the sites that come up for "movies" are authority sites that will take the top 1o without any manual intervention. study seo more than conspiracies.

For Wikipedia and IMDB I can see this. But for Youtube.com/movies and Hulu? Why is Hulu (A joint venture of media corporations) above TPB for the term "movies"?

Even "www.nytimes.com/pages/movies/index.html" ranks #11 for movies which is equally puzzling considering the lack of pirate sites for the term "movies" within the top 100. It seems to be illogical to think it is a coincidence that zero pirate sites have cracked the top 100 for that key term. If it is a coincidence or an accidental occurrence as a result of an algorithm not designed to return such results then this would seem almost amazing. The top 100 for the term "movies" looks very much like a list of what the MPAA would like to see with a few of Google's and other media company sites thrown in.