Tag: google

End Piracy? As if…

Think back to January 18, 2012, the day Internet companies led a blackout (it was more gray really) of  their websites in protest against the dreaded SOPA & PIPA bills.  On that day, Google backed a petition with a slogan that sounded so reasonable.  It said, End Piracy, Not Liberty.  It was classically effective because they could count on anyone who wasn’t paying close attention to the issue — and that would be nearly everybody — to think the message makes sense, that of course, companies like Google want to end piracy as long as the methods don’t threaten liberty.  Who wouldn’t agree with that?

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Of course, Google had no intention of doing a damn thing about piracy, and they knew that millions of people who clicked on that petition two years ago wouldn’t be paying attention to the matter by the morning of January 20th.  And since that day, which has been treated as the web industry’s Alamo and Yorktown in one, Google and friends have steadily promoted piracy, which I believe is the opposite of ending it.  So, I guess what I’m saying is that headline, which drew millions of pavlovian clicks, was unalloyed bullshit.  As mentioned a couple of posts ago, a Google search on the term “movie piracy,” takes you to what is now the top result only because Google wants it to be the top result.  I refer you to the earlier post, but this link will take you to an article written in support of  an anti-copyright, libertarian, Koch-funded organization that just happens to be wonderful for Google’s bottom line.  I don’t care if you hate copyright, this is just a tiny example of how dangerous it can be to have one company presume to “organize the world’s information.”  To serve whom exactly?

What’s in a Search Result?

Ukranians faced off riot police yesterday in Independence Square, a tense scene that ended peacefully for now, with police forces withdrawing.  The protests are sparked by anger over president Viktor Yanukovich’s apparent stonewalling on signing a trade deal with the EU that would further emancipate the fledgling democracy from its former Soviet occupiers.  The pact would bring badly needed investment into the nearly-bankrupt country of 46 million and help break the stranglehold Russia has on its industrial sector as the sole supplier of natural gas.  Meanwhile, what are Americans and other citizens who enjoy diverse economies quibbling about?  What movies are available online of course.

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My colleague at Vox Indie, Ellen Seidler brought it to my attention that a Google search for “movie piracy” will presently bring up as the second result an October 15th article written by Timothy B. Lee, a libertarian with views generally hostile toward copyrights.  Lee offers yet another variation on the message “piracy is a reaction against industry failure” by pointing to a handful of top movies that are supposedly unavailable to stream or purchase online through paid services yet. Although the central fact is exaggerated — some of the movies cited are available — Lee unblushingly quotes fellow libertarian and team leader of Piracydata.org, Jerry Brito, thus:

“The MPAA is complaining that Google leads people to infringing links, but what’s the alternative?” The movies that are available on file-sharing sites, he says, are “very rarely available for legal acquisition.”

Oh the humanity!  What is the alternative indeed?  What will my long-suffering fellow countrymen do of an evening if they cannot find a recently released movie on demand? Are they to risk carpal tunnel searching aimlessly?  Or watch something else, like maybe a film with an older release date?  Or (perish the thought) read something????  What is the point of living in a free and culturally diverse society?  What is this, Ukraine??

If you’re an American, everything about this search result should worry you, and everything it’s communicating should embarrass you. As for the worrisome part, if you read Ellen Seidler’s post about Lee and Brito and the Mercatus Center, the information-control process looks like this:  a user types in a broad search term like “movie piracy,” Google ensures that this pro-piracy article is the number two result, and the body of the article promotes the agenda of from an organization that is heavily funded by anti-labor, anti-civil-liberties forces like the Koch Brothers.   As many of us keep saying, the anti-copyright agenda is effectively an anti-fair-trade, anti-labor, anti-collective-bargaining agenda disguised as a pro-liberty agenda, and that brings us to the part that should embarrass you.  Because this message only works if you the user really believe that instant, round-the-clock access to all content is a right tantamount to a civil liberty.   If you honestly believe that, read about Ukraine this week. This is a nation hungry for a diverse economy, and I’ll bet the Ukranians would dearly enjoy a rich IP sector modeled after countries like the U.S., where artists are rewarded instead of, you know, jailed.  By contrast, people like Lee and Brito sound a hell of a lot like my kids complaining that there’s nothing to watch on television.

Google Backs Right Wing? No kidding.

Y’know how some of us keep saying the Silicon Valley agenda is not progressive and that it’s anti-copyright (think labor rights) positions are not in any way about YOU the users of its wondrous TUBES?  Well, welcome to the real face of Google, which may start to look a lot more like a portrait of Grover Norquist than its progressive supporters might have hoped.  Here’s an excerpt from this article at truth-out.org on Google’s funding for right wing organizations:

“Heritage Action, the tea-party styled political advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, is perhaps the most surprising recipient of Google’s largesse.

More than any other group working to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Heritage Action pushed for a sustained government shutdown in the fall of 2013, taking the country to the brink of a potentially catastrophic debt default.

Laying the ground for that strategy, Heritage Action held a nine-city “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour” in August 2013, providing a platform for Texas Senator Ted Cruz to address crowds of cheering tea party supporters.”