Torrentfreak: “Google Pressured to Push Proper Porn Over Piracy” plus 1 more

Torrentfreak: “Google Pressured to Push Proper Porn Over Piracy” plus 1 more

Google Pressured to Push Proper Porn Over Piracy

Posted: 08 Nov 2014 01:40 AM PST

Every adult knows. Give a child a treat and before you know it all others in the vicinity are queuing up crying for the same. And if you don’t play fair with the goodies, feet are stamped until you do.

Google has been handing out treats too lately, and like parents everywhere it’s now realizing that when you do something for one and not another, you get accused of discrimination.

As usual the problems center around piracy. During October and after years of applying metaphorical Band Aids, Google flicked its algorithmic wrist, pirate sites were demoted, legal content was promoted, and the creative industries rejoiced. Well some did at least.

Less than a month has passed and now Google is suffering fresh wailing in its other ear, this time from the porn industry. Entirely predictably the skin-flick pushers say they too want a piece of the piracy put-down pie.

According to the BBC, “prominent figures” in the porn industry are now demanding that Google does for them what the search engine just did for the audio-visual sector.

“Our whole industry has been turned upside down due to the stealing of adult content,” studio owner and actress Tasha Reign told the corporation.

But if Google’s movie and TV show issues are complex, that’s nothing when compared to getting friendly with the porn industry. Firstly, Google has begun placing ads at the top of search results when people search for TV shows such as Game of Thrones. Friendly links therein direct users to legal sources.

That is not going to happen with porn – Google forbids it. In fact, AdWords doesn’t even allow promotions for dating or international bride services. Good luck with Gangbangs of New York and Saturday Night Beaver.

Secondly, the porn industry is virtually impossible to navigate. While the MPAA and IFPI might have the luxury of speaking for the major studios and 90%+ of the recorded music sector, no such coordination exists in the porn industry. Reaching consensus on what precisely should be done could prove impossible.

Then comes the issue of demoting sites. The ‘pirate’ enemy cited most often by the adult industry are so-called tube sites but that raises even more complex issues, not least since some of the biggest companies in porn own several of the largest tube sites.

Throw in the fact that many tube sites carry both licensed and unlicensed content and any demotion could hit legitimate creators’ distribution strategies of using thousands of adult movie clips to drive traffic to external sites.

But whatever the complexities are, they are all completely moot. When approached by the BBC on the topic, Google declined to comment – period. The search engine wouldn’t be drawn “on any aspect” of the discussion, a sign that in this case the porn industry isn’t going to get what it wants.

“By working with adult companies, Google could ensure the content that is seen contains age restrictions, unlike pirated content,” protests Tasha Reign.

Tumbleweed, stage left…..

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Movie Chief: Obama is Scared to Push Google, ISPs on Piracy

Posted: 07 Nov 2014 09:19 AM PST

Late July a near perfect copy of The Expendables 3 leaked out onto file-sharing networks a full three weeks before the title was due to appear in theaters.

Within hours 100,000 copies had been downloaded, a figure that developed into millions in the weeks that followed. According to Nu Image, the company behind Expendables 3, more than 10 million people grabbed an illegal copy of the movie before its official August release.

Now, according to Nu Image CEO and founder Avi Lerner, that leak and subsequent box office flop has translated into serious financial implications for the company.

"Everyone wants to hide what happened on Expendables 3, especially the domestic distributors. 'Don't talk about it!' But I'll tell you there is about $250 million in box office we lost," Lerner says.

Describing piracy as the “worst situation that ever happened" to the industry, Lerner told HR that something big needs to be done or there won’t be anything left to save.

"The whole film business is going to be the same as the music business. Within five years, we're not going to have a business," he said.

Of course, Hollywood tried to “get something done” in 2012 by lobbying intensively for the now-defunct SOPA anti-piracy legislation. But by asking for too much, too quickly, the possibility of knock-on consequences almost universally spooked the tech sector. The result was a huge backlash and the ruination of any chance of passing not only SOPA, but any other similar variant in the near future.

Still, Lerner feels that the buck needs to stop somewhere, and in this case it should be right at the top. Barack Obama isn’t doing enough, the Nu Image CEO says, and that stems from the President’s fear of upsetting the Internet.

"It's sad because if we had a good president that cared about the film industry he would pass a very simple law, an anti-piracy law, but they don't want to stop it because they are scared of Google, and he's scared of all the ISPs," Lerner says.

Google’s power and money not only scares off the President but Congress too, Lerner adds. Furthermore, plenty of that revenue is coming piracy-related sources, so the company has no incentive stop it.

"Google has no interest to stop [piracy] because the more people download the movie the more traffic they get. And without traffic they don't get revenue from advertising. So they're happy there's piracy in the world," Lerner insists.

Of course, Google has made some recent anti-piracy overtures with a fairly drastic modification of its search engine algorithms, changes that have hit torrent sites particularly hard. But while Google might have the power and the money, it is not the gatekeeper of the Internet and leaks of movies like The Expendables 3 will happen regularly, with or without the gaming of search engine results in Hollywood’s favor.

In the meantime Google will keep getting blamed for other people’s problems, and not even the White House will be able to do anything about that.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.