[Netreach-L] FW: [Infowarrior] - Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

[Sabine K McNeill]

FYI

-----Original Message-----
From: infowarrior-bounces at attrition.org
[mailto:infowarrior-bounces at attrition.org] On Behalf Of Richard Forno
Sent: 26 January 2011 23:38
To: Undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: [Infowarrior] - Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and
More

Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More

	• Ernesto
	• 26/01/2011

http://torrentfreak.com/google-starts-censoring-bittorrent-rapidshare-and-mo
re-110126
	
It’s taken a while, but Google has finally caved in to pressure from the
entertainment industries including the MPAA and RIAA. The search engine now
actively censors terms including BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare
and Megaupload from its instant and autocomplete services. The reactions
from affected companies and services are not mild, with BitTorrent Inc.,
RapidShare and Vodo all speaking out against this act of commercial
censorship.

The entertainment industries’ quest to root out piracy on the Internet has
yet again resulted in commercial censorship. A few weeks ago Google
announced that it would start filtering “piracy related” terms from its
‘Autocomplete‘ and ‘Instant‘ services and today they quietly rolled out this
questionable feature.

Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of
keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available.  Although the
impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it
does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services
proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.

Among the list of forbidden keywords are “uTorrent”, a hugely popular piece
of entirely legal software and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and
the name of San Fransisco based company BitTorrent Inc. As of today, these
keywords will no longer be suggested by Google when you type in the first
letter, nor will they show up in Google Instant.

All combinations of the word “torrent” are also completely banned. This
means that “Ubuntu torrent” will not be suggested as a user types in Ubuntu,
and the same happens to every other combination ending in the word torrent.
This of course includes the titles of popular films and music albums, which
is the purpose of Google’s banlist.

TorrentFreak contacted BitTorrent Inc. for a reaction, and Simon Morris told
TorrentFreak that he believes the scope of this filter is too broad.

“We respect Google’s right to determine algorithms to deliver appropriate
search results to user requests. That being said, our company’s trademarked
name is fairly unique, and we’re pretty confident that anyone typing the
first six or seven letters deserves the same easy access to results as with
any other company search,” Morris said.

“A quick search for ‘BitTorrent’ currently returns a variety of legitimate
and useful links, including company information, our software, our
open-source protocol, and more. What Google may not realize is that our
technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the
technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large,” he added.

Google’s new “Piracy” filter



What is most surprising about the new filter is that the keywords appear to
be picked arbitrarily. It includes BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent and
Xunlei, but not BitComet and Vuze. While cyberlockers such as RapidShare and
Megaupload are banned, prominent sites such as 4shared, HotFile and
MediaFire are not.

In addition, all the names of popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay
are not included in Google’s banlist either. BitTorrent’s Simon Morris
agrees that this is odd, to say the least.

“There’s no reason for Google to throttle search results for our trademarks,
including BitTorrent, µTorrent and torrent. Indeed, they do still enable
autocomplete for many third-party clients that use the BitTorrent protocol,
including BitComet, BitLord, and even sites like The Pirate Bay and
Isohunt.”

Morris further points out that the inclusion of Xunlei is a little
hypocritical since Google is one of the investors in the Chinese BitTorrent
client.

“We’d also like to point out that while Google doesn’t enable autocomplete
for Xunlei (China’s largest software client that uses the  BitTorrent
protocol) Google did invest $5 million in the company in 2006, according to
reports,” Morris says, adding, “We sincerely hope Google will recognize the
value of BitTorrent and reevaluate this decision expeditiously.”

RapidShare is not pleased with Google’s new filter either, at least not with
its current scope in today’s roll-out.

“We knew about Google’s plans for quite a few weeks now. We embrace that
certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare
anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests
of our users will also be affected. We believe it was the wrong decision to
remove the term ‘RapidShare’ from the search suggestions,” RapidShare told
TorrentFreak.

“RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day
hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their
perfectly legitimate interests. That is why Google has obviously gone too
far with censoring the results of its suggest algorithm. A search engine’s
results should reflect the users’ interests and not Google’s or anybody
else’s,” the company added.

Indeed, RapidShare has certainly touched a nerve here. It is clear that this
filter is the result of pressure from the entertainment industries, which is
not at all in the interests of users. Now that Google has begun proactively
censoring their services for commercial reasons, more companies will demand
the same. At the same time, the entertainment industries will continue to
pressure Google to go even further, and censor the actual search results.

Apparently Google has decided that its users should not be searching for the
keyword BitTorrent, so why list any results then? It’s the beginning of the
end.

Jamie King, the founder of Vodo – a platform where artists can share their
work with million of people at no cost – agrees with this assessment.
Searching for one of their perfectly legal releases on Google used to
suggest the word “torrent” with a link to the download page, but not
anymore.

“Google already showed it will censor for the highest bidder — China Inc.
springs to mind. Now it’s doing it for MPAA & Co.,” King told TorrentFreak.

“I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping
the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute
legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of
Big Media in its death throes.”

Indeed, Google is going down the wrong path by willingly and broadly
censoring its services to please a few big companies. This is not the way to
get rid of piracy, it’s the way to a corporate controlled Internet. Google
may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but
it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide.
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