Category: Piracy

@perstrombeck: Having a Bubble Bath or Why the “Buried” Piracy Report Got It All Backwards

[Editor Charlie sez:  Maybe the report was buried because it was an expensive embarrassment, results oriented, left out important data and was policy laundering?  And why was it only just discovered now that the European Commission fined Google $2.7 billion?  Here’s a tip–if something seems like bullshit, it probably is.]

Conventional wisdom says if you pour cold water into a hot bath, the temperature of the bath water will fall. New research, however, challenges this outdated view. That’s right: I was having a nice, hot bubble bath and decided to do a scientific experiment. So I opened the cold water tap and let it run into the tub. After ten minutes, I measured the temperature and again after fifteen minutes. To my surprise, the temperature was the same both times! It felt strange, because I was freezing, but you can’t argue with research. My experiment shows that pouring cold water into a hot tub does not decrease the water temperature. I thought about writing a 300-page report about it, but the government would only bury it.

You guessed it, I’m not really talking about bathing but the supposedly buried report that says piracy does not hurt legal sales. This idea is one of the pirates’ favourite daydreams. The recently leaked report adds to the daydreaming. I read the 307 pages so you wouldn’t have to. The mistake is on page 74. The claims go against established research, empirical evidence and common sense. The reason for the misleading conclusion is method problems (intentional or not, your guess is as good as mine).

Read the post on Netopia

Jack Morse: The secret, illicit [piracy] underside of Google Drive

 

[Editor Charlie sez:  From the “Stop Me Before I Infringe Again” Dept….]

Turns out that Google Drive is a whole lot less buttoned up than you may have thought.

The file-sharing service typically associated with spreadsheets and office life has a dirty little secret, and it’s one that our Mountain View overlords may not be so stoked on. Namely, the service is a haven for illegal file-sharing.

While those looking to score, say, pirated Game of Thrones episodes may first turn to big-name torrenting sites like The Pirate Bay, copyright scofflaws in the know are apparently taking advantage of the generous free 15GB of storage offered by Google Drive to host and share copies of popular movies and television shows. According to Gadgets360, which reviewed a host of DMCA takedown requests, copyright holders filed almost 5,000 requests in August for Google to pull material from Drive — compared to approximately 100 requests for file-hosting site MEGA and less than 12 requests for Dropbox.

The offending goods reportedly include both your standard video files as well as a unique twist on the file sharing MO: Instead of uploading entire movies or shows to Drive itself, people are dropping in scores of unlisted YouTube links.

 

Essentially, the idea is that unlisted links are less likely to be spotted by automated systems crawling for this sort of thing and are therefore less likely to be pulled. Putting a collection of those links in one Drive and sharing it over social media is like passing around a secret phonebook containing the listings for all your favorite pirated content.

Read the post on Mashable

Search Working As Planned: Google Handles a Billion Piracy Takedown Requests in a Year

Read the fine print: “Of the 1,007,741,143 takedown requests received, 908,237,861 were removed from search results.”  So Google did not remove 99,503,282 infringing links.

I wonder how much traffic Google derives from a billion takedowns?  Or the 99,503,282 they don’t take down?  This is how Google messages their pathetic record on piracy…”but we took down 90%!”  Don’t be deceived by Google duplicity.

As the biggest provider of search results on the Internet, Google receives a constant barrage of requests to remove content from its results. Some of those requests come from governments, but the majority are submitted by copyright owners very keen to stop their work from being pirated.

Read the post on PC Mag.

 

@Aditya Bhat: Is Google about to launch the largest torrent search engine ever seen?

[Editor Charlie sez:  In their hearts, they know they are criminals…Let the RICO games begin!]

After years of catering to copyright holders and their increasing demands, is Google about to go rogue in sheer frustration? According to a report by TorrentFreak, 2017 could well be the year Google throws its toys out of the pram, raises the Jolly Roger and takes to the digital seas in anger by launching its very own mega torrent search engine.

Over the last decade the copyright industry has been baying for pirate blood and have badgered Google for far broader search engine censorship to curb the growing piracy problem. In 2012 alone, Google removed over 50 million pirate search results that were infringing on the copyright holders’ content.

Read the post on International Business Times.

@hypebot: 23% Of CDs Sold On Amazon Are Counterfeit, Say Investigators

Two weeks ago the The Association of Independent Music has issued an strong warning regarding a “serious counterfeit operation selling large numbers of CDs” using Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) system:

“It appears that this product is manufactured in China, but is almost indistinguishable from the genuine article to the extent that even the legitimate manufacturer cannot tell without very close examination.

The RIAA did their own investigation with staggering results. The record label trade group placed orders on Amazon in a range of categories from new releases to greatest hits. Out of the 194 CDs delivered, 44 or 23% were counterfeit – including 18 CDs in orders fulfilled by Amazon itself, not a third-party vendor. If the order was for a “greatest hits” package, the percentage of counterfeits jumped to 78%.

Read the post on Hypebot.