Naturally, this is not grounds for removal of this page at Google. Keith’s site in our list, merely because it made a reference to illegal copies of our course. To our shock and horror, an employee of ours mistakenly included Mr. We of course have every right to request that Google have these sites removed from their search engine results because we believe these sites violate the DMCA, which prohibits the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials over the internet. We were actually submitting to Google a list of sites that were illegally distributing copies of our copyrighted intellectual property. Nevertheless, please permit us a moment to explain. We recognize this was a careless error, and there is really no excuse for this. Please know that we are ardent supporters and advocates of free speech for everyone. ![]() Please understand that we had no intention whatsoever to suppress the speech on Mr. Keith and his bloggers for this mistake, for which we are deeply regretful. As per our request, Google did indeed remove this page from their search listings. We instructed Google to block a blog site managed by Jeremy Keith, citing that they were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyrights Act (DMCA). Here is an official statement of apology, sent by email for redistribution here or anywhere else (try to ignore the bits where The Session is referred to as “a blog”): He is going to contact Google and ask them to reinstate the discussion on The Session in the search index. Well, Gary is very sorry now and promises he won’t do it again. It’s like putting guns into the hands of small children. Gary Bourcherle abused a piece of extremely poor legislation in a scattergun approach without even understanding what he was doing. He was completely oblivious to the potential consequences of his actions were he to lose a counter-claim in court. The more I talked to him, the more I realised that he simply had no idea about the DMCA. I subsequently had a phone conversation with Gary and he was quite contrite about his actions- although he did try to claim that the mere mention of torrents in an online discussion might be justification for a take down (a completely indefensible attitude). Google then removes all those URLs from its search index without verifying any infringement. So here’s what’s happening: A company is doing a search for a phrase on Google, making a list of all the URLs returned by that search and then submitting that list to Google as part of a DMCA claim. ![]() While we try to check every URL to make sure it either contains torrents, or is a torrent file sharing site (not the case with this site), it was included with our complaint inadvertently. The following URL was one of hundreds of URLS (mostly torrent sites) found with the Google search terms Burge+Pitch+Torrent: We believe our copyrighted works have been illegally copied and made available for free download at the web sites listed below … Periodically we’ve contacted Google to submit the following complaint: I got an email from Gary Boucherle at who explained: In turns out that the correct cause is incompetence at a stunning level. When I wrote about the shenanigans of Perfect Pitch, in which a DMCA claim was used to remove a perfectly innocuous discussion on The Session from Google’s search index, I pondered about whether malice could be ascribed:Ĭould it be that the owner of sent a DMCA complaint to Google simply because another site was getting higher rankings for the phrase “perfect pitch”? If so, then that’s a whole new level of SEO snake-oilery. I have experienced a textbook case of extremely advanced incompetence. Mash them up and that leaves us with Clark’s law:Īny sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.Īny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |