After More Than Two Years, Google Finally Releasing New “Pirate Update” To Fight Piracy
In August 2012, to stem accusations that it doesn’t do enough to fight piracy, Google released what’s known as the Pirate Update, a system that penalized sites deemed to be violating copyright laws. Next week, Google is finally going to refresh that system to catch new offenders and…
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To Avoid Liability, Google Limits German News Content To Headlines
German news and magazine publishers are determined, one way or another, to get Google to pay them for their content. They’re not upset about the content appearing in Google News or search. They want it to appear – they just want Google to pay for it. Google doesn’t want to pay….
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Bing Image Widget Now Offline After Getty Images Lawsuit
The Bing Image Widget that launched on August 22nd is now temporarily offline after Getty Images sued Microsoft over the feature. If you try to access the tool, you will be presented with a notice that the “Image Widget” has been “temporarily removed the beta.” Here is a…
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Google DMCA Notices Reach Record High With 7.8 Million Link Removal Requests Filed In One Week
Going on Google’s recent takedown notice numbers, it looks as if the site may be spending as much time on link removal requests as it is algorithm updates. According to TorrentFreak, Google is now processing an average of more than a million takedown requests a day, an enormous increase from…
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Spainish Law To Force Google To Index And Pay For Local News
There’s a basic feeling among traditional news publishers throughout Europe, and among some in the US, that Google has benefited enormously from their content but failed to offer anything in return. Furthermore, many publishers see Google as directly responsible for the decline of their…
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Rather Than Opt-Out Of Google, German News Publishers Demand 11% Cut Of Revenue
German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google for being included in its listings rather than choosing to opt-out. This time, the publishers want an 11% cut of Google’s revenue related to them being listed. The news comes from…
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Despite Google’s Efforts, Counterfeiters Are Commonplace On AdWords
Should a company that includes the phrase “don’t be evil” in their code of conduct be expected to block counterfeiters from buying ads on their search engine result pages? Is it “evil” to sell AdWords to websites that are filled with copyright infringing photos? These…
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The War On Links
In case you didn’t notice, we are waging a war over links. Some would say that SEOs are at war with search engines, but I disagree. Search engines and SEOs have a symbiotic relationship; and without meaning to, we’ve killed the value of the link. The link, once a simple connector from…
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Tweet Showing How Google Itself Is A “Scraper Site” Goes Massively Viral
Perhaps it’s SEOs’ “Oreo” moment, a tweet relating to search engine optimization that’s gained nearly as much attention as Oreo’s famous Super Bowl blackout tweet. But the subject was a perfect storm of goodness — a real-life example of Google doing the…
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MPAA: 82 Percent Of Searches Leading To Pirated Content Come From Google
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) today accused Google and other search engines of playing “a significant role” in directing consumers to pirated movies and TV shows, with a special callout for the amount of Google searches that lead to infringing material. It’s the…
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Could You Walk In Google’s Shoes? Making Tough Calls With Search Listings
It’s pretty easy to sit back and slam Google for how you think it should make decisions when it comes to search listings. It’s much harder to actually make those decisions, when you have a deeper understanding of all the implications involved. To experience this better, here’s a…
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How to Recover When Your Content Is Stolen
Last month, I shared a case study of a client I’m currently working with on a duplicate content issue. It turns out that this particular site had significantly lost rankings over the past year because of other sites “lifting” their content, often verbatim, causing the…
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Bing Reports They Receive Hundreds Of Thousands Of DMCA Complaints Every Month
Because of their share of the search market, Google is most frequently targeted by copyright holders filing DMCA complaints, but the search giant is not the only one managing requests to remove unlawful links from search results. TorrentFreak reports B…
New Research Says Search Engines Have Little To Do With Promoting Pirated Content
A new research paper authored by Matt Schruers and published by the Computer & Communications Industry Association argues that search engines have been unfairly targeted in the quest to impede online copyright infringement. According to the paper, the perception is that search engines are the…
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German Publishers Opt-In To Google News — For The Moment
Following the enactment of a controversial copyright law in Germany, Google said that it would require publishers to formally “opt-in” to Google News or be excluded from results. Accordingly major German publishers have decided to do so — for now. The new law, which went into…
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Google Continues Censoring Piracy Related Search Suggestions By Blocking Grooveshark
TorrentFreak reports Google has added another web site to the piracy block list for their instant search suggestions. The site is named Grooveshark, which is a popular free music streaming service. Google would not comment specifically about Grooveshark but told TorrentFreak, “our algorithms…
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Google’s Schmidt: Hollywood Should Take Content Pirates To Court
Google’s Eric Schmidt says that the entertainment industry should focus on taking content pirates to court, rather than just trying to get Google (and other search engines) to remove pirate sites from search results. His comments, reported by Variety, came yesterday during an impromptu chat…
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State AGs: Google Still Allows & Profits From Illegal Drug Ads
The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) is accusing Google of continuing to give consumers access to illegal and counterfeit goods — including drugs — in its search results, and letting sites that deal in such goods to advertise with Google. NAAG has asked Google co-founder…
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Google Refuses Hollywood Studio Requests To De-List File Storage Site Mega
In recent weeks, Hollywood studios NBC Universal and Warner Bros both submitted DMCA takedown requests asking Google to de-list the file storage website Mega from its search index. According to a report on TorrentFreak, NBC Universal claimed Mega’s homepage linked to the NBC-owned film Mama,…
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Google Removes Links To Documentary In Response To Invalid Takedown Requests By Hollywood Studios
The recently released TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay – Away from Keyboad, a documentary that sympathizes with the founders of the infamous file sharing website The Pirate Bay, has become the target of fraudulent link takedown requests from major Hollywood Studios, including Viacom, Paramount, Fox…
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