Google Adds Pirate Bay Domains to Censorship List

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Oh no, no autocomplete for The Pirate Bay? How will people ever find the site now? :rolleyes:

Google has quietly expanded its list of censored search phrases with the addition of The Pirate Bay’s domain names. The blacklist prevents popular keywords from appearing in Google’s Instant and Autocomplete search services, while the pages themselves remain indexed. Although Google understands that there is no silver bullet to stop online copyright infringement, the search giant is convinced that the steps they’ve taken could help to decrease piracy.
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Whats next, Google maps will route me around high crime streets where drug trafficing or prostitution is known to occur? Since when is it a crime to merely link to various resources, and how does society benefit from the censorship and does it accomplish its goal?

FAIL.
 
But Google is good for society and wants to make a positive difference in your life (by finding innovative ways to target you with ads) so this must be the mostest bestest way to make your life better-er.
 
Kenjiwing said:
This is kind of lame honestly.. google caving to the man.
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Like they did in China. Google only cares about the bottom line, not ideology. Do no evil - unless it touches the pocketbook.
 
GuiltyDragon said:
Corporations dictating what we can and can't see is almost as bad as Governments doing it.
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Except they aren't blocking the site or searching for the full term ... they are just disabling the autocomplete ... this is a pretty weak form of censorship ... really just Google doing lip service to this issue ;)
 
I think some of you guys are looking at it from the wrong perspective here.

First the obvious of course; I'm almost 100% sure Google understands how stupid and futile this is to begin with. The average person will take only 10 seconds to figure out how to find the site anyways, and Google knows this. On the opposite side, they got the MPAA, RIAA, and whatever bought off politicians constantly harassing them to address their concerns as well.

So why not please both sides of the court. Simply omit any search results of thepiratebay, thereby pleasing the bad boogie men, giving them the illusion they're taking this issue under the reigns doing something about it. But for the common user this is no shape or form will hinder their pirating whatsoever because there's thousands of other ways to bypass this clumsy approach.

In short, Google is simply catering to both sides of the fence, and if there's something to argue here fellas, it's whether or not Google should be playing both sides or not.
 
Who cares exactly?

1) TPB sucks
2) Google already censors a bunch of stuff in the US anyways
3) Anyone who wants to use crappy-ol TPB would go directly to their site anyways

All it does for Google is say "We care about not letting people download 'linux ISOs'." ;)
 
Ski said:
I think some of you guys are looking at it from the wrong perspective here.

First the obvious of course; I'm almost 100% sure Google understands how stupid and futile this is to begin with. The average person will take only 10 seconds to figure out how to find the site anyways, and Google knows this. On the opposite side, they got the MPAA, RIAA, and whatever bought off politicians constantly harassing them to address their concerns as well.

So why not please both sides of the court. Simply omit any search results of thepiratebay, thereby pleasing the bad boogie men, giving them the illusion they're taking this issue under the reigns doing something about it. But for the common user this is no shape or form will hinder their pirating whatsoever because there's thousands of other ways to bypass this clumsy approach.

In short, Google is simply catering to both sides of the fence, and if there's something to argue here fellas, it's whether or not Google should be playing both sides or not.
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It could be "lip service", but it could also be looked at as the 'first step' of sorts.
 
Ducman69 said:
Whats next, Google maps will route me around high crime streets where drug trafficing or prostitution is known to occur?
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You know.... I really REALLY wish my GPS did this. We have this one customer that in order to get to from the office I have to drive through 2 of the shadiest neighborhoods I've ever had to go through in North Jersey. All the while I have a $5,000 server in my trunk. I wish they had some kind of median income database, and routed me around those places.
 
GuiltyDragon said:
Corporations dictating what we can and can't see is almost as bad as Governments doing it.
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Your using a free product, they can take it away from just you if they want, for no reason.

Don't like it, search somewhere else
 
jadams said:
You know.... I really REALLY wish my GPS did this. We have this one customer that in order to get to from the office I have to drive through 2 of the shadiest neighborhoods I've ever had to go through in North Jersey. All the while I have a $5,000 server in my trunk. I wish they had some kind of median income database, and routed me around those places.
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Avoidances:
Toll Roads
Ferries
Ghettos
Red Light District
 
Ducman69 said:
Whats next, Google maps will route me around high crime streets where drug trafficing or prostitution is known to occur? Since when is it a crime to merely link to various resources, and how does society benefit from the censorship and does it accomplish its goal?

FAIL.
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You do realise it's not actually removing the links, just the autocomplete function? So if you type "pirate bay" and hit enter, you'll still get TPB, but if you type "pira" it's not gonna autocomplete so you'll somehow have to remember that while looking for the pirate bay, it's called the pirate bay :p
 
Tudz said:
You do realise it's not actually removing the links, just the autocomplete function?
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I do now, but didn't at the time of my indignant outburst. :D Still, sounds like baby steps to test the waters. Its like with gas prices, dump $3.50 a gallon on people back when it was $1.50 and people will go ballistic. Move up to it gradually, and its already an accepted norm that people grumble about but aren't reaching for their pitchforks.
 
Tudz said:
You do realise it's not actually removing the links, just the autocomplete function? So if you type "pirate bay" and hit enter, you'll still get TPB, but if you type "pira" it's not gonna autocomplete so you'll somehow have to remember that while looking for the pirate bay, it's called the pirate bay :p
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We Americans require automatic word completion in order to function as a society. Without it, I'd never remember how to spell the priat booyee...peraity bcy...you know what I mean. >.<
 
what's the point of GOOGLE if they limit things their foundation is based on.
 
What happened to you,Google? You used to be cool.

Especially when TPB just partnered with an indie game designer to distribute their game via torrent and have links so that players can decide to contribute to the author as they wish.

Five years ago I'd never think I'd have to worry about Google acting as the Evil Empire - they managed to walk the line and not lose their soul from staring into the void. Now, I'm not so sure - and its getting worse. Where is the Google of "You get these awesome services and in return, we put a little box of ads here that we think you may be interested in based on what you're searching for at the moment"? Now, they're correlating data across everything, making real-names a necessity, monitoring everything you do for advertising dollars and governments alike, and making decisions like this.

IXQuick and DuckDuckGo - remember them, use them, love them. If you absolutely need a Google search use IXQuick's "Startpage.com" which basically strips all your identifying info (cookies, IP etc..) and IXQuick makes the Google query for you.

Google really has some great services (ie gmail, google voice, drive, calendars etc...) but if I can't use them without worry that everything I'm doing is being indexed and sold, I can't use them any longer. I'd be happy to let them show the "old style" of adwords, or even to pay a modest amount of cash to ensure my privacy... Even worse, with Android being the most "open" of the smartphone and tablet platforms around, this is even a bigger problem as everything is configured to use Google's ecosystem - maybe I don't want my phone contacts and email contacts merged by default etc... RIP Maemo/MeeGo....

Is there anything we can do to turn Google around at this point?
 
Azhar said:
Like they did in China. Google only cares about the bottom line, not ideology. Do no evil - unless it touches the pocketbook.
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Removing search results is evil?

I can't imagine how you must feel about, say, tax fraud.
 
If Google is a search engine, shouldn't it -- oh, I don't know -- reveal the full results of the search you request? Isn't that the whole point of a search engine?
 
If the RIAA/MPAA actually thinks this deters people, they're in the wrong neighborhood.
 
Tudz said:
You do realise it's not actually removing the links, just the autocomplete function? So if you type "pirate bay" and hit enter, you'll still get TPB, but if you type "pira" it's not gonna autocomplete so you'll somehow have to remember that while looking for the pirate bay, it's called the pirate bay :p
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Haha, actually "TPB" works too...
 
As already said, they are just testing the waters. They want to know if people will care about censorship when it reaches the search results.

If principles don't exist in this world, however, fine filter all you want. It won't change anything. ;)
 
wonderfield said:
Removing search results is evil?

I can't imagine how you must feel about, say, tax fraud.
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Tongue in cheek. I'm 101% against piracy and lean to the piracy-is-the-same-as-stealing crowd. But regardless, Google doesn't do anything unless they can either profit from it or whether it doesn't touch their bottom line.
 
I've long considered Google just as bad as Microsoft or Apple ever were, so this is no biggie for me. Just another reason to not give them sympathy.
 
Tudz said:
You do realise it's not actually removing the links, just the autocomplete function? So if you type "pirate bay" and hit enter, you'll still get TPB, but if you type "pira" it's not gonna autocomplete so you'll somehow have to remember that while looking for the pirate bay, it's called the pirate bay :p
Click to expand...

Yea, but what about when the change extensions from .se to .tk or something?

I don't mind about Pirate Bay, but soon [H] will be on the black list because of some stupid algorithm that Google created (similar to YouTube copyright violations on 100% original content). No one really notices the first little things they do, until you wake up and half your shit is gone. I doubt that will happen, but it's a possibility.
 
Ducman69 said:
I do now, but didn't at the time of my indignant outburst. :D Still, sounds like baby steps to test the waters. Its like with gas prices, dump $3.50 a gallon on people back when it was $1.50 and people will go ballistic. Move up to it gradually, and its already an accepted norm that people grumble about but aren't reaching for their pitchforks.
Click to expand...

Yeah maybe, but google already blocks a heap of auto complete things. Start typing "pornogr" into google and it won't autcomplete, doesn't mean it won't find all the porn for you when you self-complete and type "pornography" :p In fact, searching for anything porn related and you'll find google autocomplete somewhat lacking :D

http://mashable.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-search-naughty-words/

Maybe it's the start of the slippery slope, but on the flip side it could also just be google giving a token "we don't condone this" attitude without actually blocking or censoring anything in reality. I don't imagine Google gives a right royal fuck about copyright infringement, they just don't want to get dragged over the coals for supporting it nor do they want to put in a lot of effort to stop it if they don't have to (by manually blocking searches), so instead they remove it from autocomplete so they can say "hey, we aren't supporting that".

That's my glass half full take on it anyway, the glass half empty take on it is that it's the start of the slippery slope, but we'll have to see.
 
This wont do shit all, but the concept is what really makes this wrong. How far are they going to go with this censorship? It's really getting ridiculous. The RIAA/MPAA has way too much power and somehow they need to be stopped. It's just getting WAY out of hand. They seem to give really awesome blow jobs because the government is always getting on their knees and doing whatever they're told by them.

Next thing you know ISPs will be forced to censor sites too... oh wait... SOPA. They WILL bring it back, it's only a matter of time. Or they'll just pull off a Megadownload.com situation on all the sites they don't like. If you can't censor the site, just take it down. That's basically their way of doing things.
 
Don't need google when my browser already remembers to autcomplete it from the address bar.
 
Huh?

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