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 is allowing sites that deal in such goods to advertise with Google. NAAG has asked Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page to discuss its concerns at a national meeting of state attorneys general that's happening June 17-19 in Boston. There's no formal statement that I can find on the NAAG website, but both USA Today and the Mississippi Business Journal are quoting that state's AG, Jim Hood, co-chair [...]

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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, while Warner Bros alleged Mega made pirated copies of its film Gangster Squad available from its website. Since Mega's homepage doesn't link to any files, Google did not remove the website from its search index. Launched in January of this year, Mega is the successor site of Megaupload, a fil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google: Legal | Google: Pirate Update | Legal: Censorship | Legal: Copyright

The recently released TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard, 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 and Lionsgate. After its February release on The Pirate Bay website under a Creative Commons license making it free to download, Google has received multiple DMCA takedown requests asking that links to the film be removed from search results. The requests came through anti-piracy firms representing th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google: Pirate Update | Legal: Censorship | Legal: Copyright

According to a report from IDG News, a "toned down" version of an earlier, more restrictive "ancillary copyright" law has been published in Germany and will go into effect in August. The ”ancillary copyright” rule was proposed in August of 2012. In its initial form it would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items -- essentially a "link tax." The law was pushed by German magazine and newspaper publishers that see the Internet and Google, in particular, as the cause of many of their subscription, readership and [...]

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In August of last year, a number of German lawmakers were pressing proposed "ancillary copyright" legislation that would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items. The proposed law was championed by German magazine and newspaper publishers who, like their counterparts in the US, are seeing declining readership and ad sales. The law did pass in the German parliament, but Bloomberg reports that a compromise reached earlier this week stayed in. That compromise will allow Google (and others) "to display 'single word [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Top News

The good news for search engines like Google is a proposed German copyright law won't require them to pay to show short summaries of news content. However, uncertainty remains about how much might be "too much" and require a license. The new law is expected to pass on Friday. NOTE: See our follow-up story from today: Google Avoids Link Tax But Ambiguous New “Ancillary Copyright” Law Sets Up Legal Battle To Come Der Spiegel explains more about the change: "Google will still be permitted to use "snippets" of content from publisher's web sites in its search results.... "What the ne [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: News | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling & Indexing

Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee of the German Bundestag -- Germany's national parliament -- held an expert hearing on a proposed "Leistungsschutzrecht" law for news publishers. The law, known as "ancillary copyright" in English, would require search engines and others -- perhaps even Facebook, Twitter and individual bloggers -- to pay news publishers if they link to or even briefly summarize news content. The hearing didn't result in a vote. It was the next step in a process that may lead to Leistungsschutzrecht becoming law or not. Below, some background on what happened at the hearing, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Google: News | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Top News

TorrentFreak reports that Google updated their transparency report to now show the number and specific details on the false takedown requests attempted. You can see this level of detail by going to a specific takedown request. For example, looking at takedown request ID 266534 shows that of the 886 URLs reported for DMCA violations, 3% of them, or 24 URLs, Google decided not to take down. It is listed in the "no action taken" section. If you scroll down a bit, you can sort by that column and then click on the details to see specifically which URLs no action was taken against. Here [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Pirate Update | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Legal: Censorship | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Trademarks

A report from GigaOm this morning discusses a ridiculous proposed "ancillary copyright" law in Germany that would compel Google -- and others online -- to pay to link to and excerpt any content from German publishers' websites (e.g., newspapers). The law currently is in draft form and being debated by stakeholders and legislators. The "fair use" doctrine would prohibit this sort of idea from becoming law in the US. But under the proposed German law, every link and/or content excerpts included in search results would be subject to licensing fees. One question is how broadly the law would [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Outside US | Legal: Copyright

Google says that YouTube isn't going to somehow solely escape its new "pirate penalty." Any popular site may be OK, as the penalty works off of more than pure copyright infringement reports. Nuances in calculating the penalty should save popular user-generated content sites, the company said. The Pirate Penalty Initially, it sounded as if sites with many copyright infringement complaints filed against them with Google -- such as those listed here in the Google Transparency Report -- would be at risk under the new pirate penalty Google will begin imposing next week. If that were the c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Features: Analysis | Google: Pirate Update | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Google: YouTube & Video | Legal: Copyright | Top News

Google has announced that it will soon penalize sites that are repeatedly accused of copyright infringement. But one site in particular doesn't need to worry: Google's own YouTube. It has a unique immunity against the forthcoming penalty. POSTSCRIPT: Please also be sure to read our follow-up article, Google: Many Popular Sites Will Escape Pirate Penalty, Not Just YouTube The penalty -- which we've dubbed the Emanuel Update -- impacts Google's web search results. If someone has reported a web search listing as being a copyright violation, using the DMCA takedown mechanism, that's a stri [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: Pirate Update | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Google: YouTube & Video | Legal: Copyright | Top News

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has once again come out swinging at Google, saying the company isn't doing enough to fight copyright infringement online. But it may be that the RIAA itself is guilty of that charge. In a blog post this week, RIAA Executive VP Brad Buckles shares what the organization calls "clear facts" about Google's efforts to remove infringing pages from Google's search results. A week ago, Google announced the addition of Copyright Removal Requests to its Transparency Report, but Buckles says "Google's data misleads." In a series of five "facts," [...]

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Microsoft says it does send copyright-related takedown requests to its own search engine, Bing, in addition to the multitude of requests that it sends to Google. This comes on the heels of yesterday's news that Microsoft is the number one submitter of copyright-related URL removal requests to Google. It sent more than 500,000 such requests in the past month, asking Google to remove URLs that host pirated copies of Microsoft products and other copyright-infringing material. TechDirt pointed out that some of the URLs that Microsoft asked Google to remove were still appearing in Bing's sear [...]

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Google announced they have enhanced the Google Transparency Report to include the removal requests to take down individual search results from showing up in Google. In fact, Google has told us in the past month they have received 1,246,713 removal requests from 24,129 different target domains of 1,296 copyright owners by 1,087 reporting organizations. So only just over a thousand copyright owners submitted removal requests and top five include Microsoft with over a half a million URL removal requests last month followed by British Recorded Music Industry, NBC Universal, Elegant Angel and R [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Legal | Google: Web Search | Legal: Copyright

As their long-running legal battle continues, Google has asked a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits brought by authors' and photographers' groups over its book-scanning service. According to Bloomberg News, Google told judge Denny Chin that The Authors Guild can't sue on behalf of the authors because the Guild doesn't own the copyrights to the books that Google has been scanning since the program was announced in 2004. Reuters reports that, in response to Google's claim, Chin said "it would take forever" to resolve individual author's lawsuits and that it "seems to make sense" to allow th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Book Search | Google: Legal | Legal: Copyright | Top News

Several major UK entertainment industry groups are accusing Google and Bing of directing searchers to illegal content, and have proposed a "Code of Practice" for how search engines can better encourage consumers to locate legal content on the web. The groups are also calling for the UK government to help oversee how well the search engines administer the recommendations listed in the Code of Practice. As The Guardian reports, the groups involved in the proposal include the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Associati [...]

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Google has confirmed to several media outlets (initially CNET) that it will join other prominent websites tomorrow, including Wikipedia, in protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills. While Wikipedia has said it will go dark, Google will link to anti-SOPA information on its homepage. Still, that information will be seen by millions who otherwise might not know about the legislation. SOPA and PIPA are supported by a range of corporate entities and media companies that elicited these draconian bills from Congress to address global IP piracy, copyright violati [...]

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According to a report from Chinese news agency Xinhua, a judge in India has ordered a broad range of online companies, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo, to "delete 'inflammatory' images of religious figures" from their sites. Though not identified in news reports the images were deemed offensive or blasphemous under a sweeping law enacted earlier this year aimed at blocking or removing "offensive" or "objectionable" content from the internet in India. In case the problem with implementation of a law against "objectionable" content isn't self-evident its provisions are vague and scope [...]

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China has historically been the land of copyright and trademark infringement of Western software, goods and other intellectual property -- and Chinese websites such as Baidu and Taobao its willing handmaidens. In February of this year the US trade authority named Baidu one of the world’s "notorious markets" because it was seen facilitating copyright infringement. Here's what the US Trade Representative said in February: Baidu exemplifies the problem of online services engaged in "deep linking," which provide links to online locations containing the allegedly infringing materials. The [n [...]

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Saying that Google has a "special responsibility" to fight copyright infringement, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has issued a report card that scolds Google for not following through on promises to fight piracy. In a report card issued Monday, the RIAA takes a look back at four promises that Google made last year surrounding copyright protections on the web. Overall, Google gets an "Incomplete" grade. The RIAA admits that Google has "taken some modest steps" to fight copyright infringement, but spends most of its five-page report scolding Google for coming up short: " [...]

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