<nettime> Tweaking the search algorithm in favor media companies

[nettime's avid reader <nettime@kein.org>]

Google Starts Punishing “Pirate” Sites In Search Results
August 10, 2012
https://torrentfreak.com/google-starts-punishing-pirate-sites-in-search-results-120810/


Google announced today that it will lower the search engine rankings of 
websites that receive a high number of DMCA takedown requests, 
independent of whether the linked content is lawful or not. The 
algorithm change is the result of extensive lobbying efforts by 
Hollywood and the major music labels, and could severely degrade the 
rankings of websites such as The Pirate Bay, FilesTube, and even YouTube.

yFor years entertainment industry groups have lobbied search engines to 
penalize sites that link to a high number of copyrighted files, and 
today Google has given in to their demands.

The search engine will soon take into consideration the number of DMCA 
takedown notices it receives against sites to determine the ranking of 
those websites in its search results.

“Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in 
our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive 
for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may 
appear lower in our results,” Google’s Amit Singhal writes in a blog post.

Earlier this year Google decided to publish all takedown requests online 
as part of their transparency report, and they will now use this data as 
part of their search algorithm. This means that websites for which 
Google receives a high number of valid takedown requests will be penalized.

The top receivers of these notices over the past year were 
filestube.com, extratorrent.com, torrenthound.com, bitsnoop.com and 
isohunt.com. They can expect to appear lower in future search results 
and will therefore receive less traffic through Google searches. Whether 
Google will downgrade YouTube, where (tens of) thousands of videos are 
routinely disabled because of alleged infringements, is unknown at this 
point.

Google stresses that it doesn’t know whether content is authorized or 
not, so removal of pages from its search results will only take place 
following a valid DMCA takedown notice.

“Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts 
can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine 
whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law,” 
Singhal writes.

“So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search 
results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we 
receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner.”

One of the main problems with Google’s new ranking is that perfectly 
legitimate content on sites with a high number of takedown requests will 
be degraded as well. Taking YouTube as an example, millions of relevant 
and legal search results will be degraded simply because there are a 
high number of “unauthorized” videos posted to the site.

Adding the high number of bogus DMCA notices which Google sees as valid, 
many sites may also be punished for the faulty takedown requests that 
copyright holders send. That’s worrying to say the least.

For Hollywood and the major music labels Google’s announcement is a 
clear win. In fact, it was one of the three demands they handed out to 
Google, Bing and Yahoo last year during a behind-closed-doors meeting.

The other two demands were “prioritize websites that obtain 
certification as a licensed site under a recognized scheme” and “stop 
indexing websites that are subject to court orders while establishing 
suitable procedures to de-index substantially infringing sites.”

Whether Google will also adopt these suggestions remains to be seen.




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