As previously
reported,
Google announced that it will implement a new ranking signal into its
search algorithm next week. The search engine will start taking the
number of “valid” copyright removal notices it receives for a site, into
account when ranking content.
Are you concerned about this new addition? Let us know in the comments.
Almost as soon as the Blogosphere was able to react to the news, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
put out its own post about it.
Julie Samuels and Mitch Stoltz with the EFF write, “Earlier this
summer, we applauded Google for releasing detailed stats about content
removal requests from copyright holders. Now that we know how they are
going to use that data, we are less enthusiastic.”
The two go on to express concerns with how “opaque” Google is being
about the process, despite Google’s claim that it will “continue to be
transparent about copyright removals.”
The EFF’s concerns are the vagueness of what Google considers to be a
high number of removal notices, how Google plans to make its
determinations, and how “there will be no process of recourse for sites
who have been demoted.”
Google does say that it will “continue to provide ‘
counter-notice‘ tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated.”
“In particular, we worry about the false positives problem,” says the
EFF. “For example, we’ve seen the government wrongly target sites that
actually have a right to post the allegedly infringing material in
question or otherwise legally display content. In short, without details
on how Google’s process works, we have no reason to believe they won’t
make similar, over-inclusive mistakes, dropping lawful, relevant speech
lower in its search results without recourse for the speakers.”
“Takedown requests are nothing more than accusations of copyright
infringement,” the EFF addds. “No court or other umpire confirms that
the accusations are valid (although copyright owners can be liable for
bad-faith accusations). Demoting search results – effectively telling
the searcher that
these are not the websites you’re looking for – based on accusations alone gives copyright owners one more bit of control over what we see, hear, and read.”
The EFF concludes by saying that Google’s “opaque policies” threaten lawful sites and undermine confidence in search results.
The EFF is not the only group to quickly speak out about the
announcement. Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group, also put out
a much longer response.
We also received the following statement from Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney, John Bergmayer:
“It may make good business sense for Google to take extraordinary
steps, far beyond what the law requires, to help the media companies it
partners with. That said, its plan to penalize sites that receive DMCA
notices raises many questions.
“Sites may not know about, or have the ability to easily challenge,
notices sent to Google. And Google has set up a system that may be
abused by bad faith actors who want to suppress their rivals and
competitors. Sites that host a lot of content, or are very popular, may
receive a disproportionate number of notices (which are mere
accusations of infringement) without being disproportionately
infringing. And user-generated content sites could be harmed by this
change, even though the DMCA was structured to protect them.
“Google needs to make sure this change does not harm Internet users or the Internet ecosystem.”
It’s going to be quite interesting to see how Google’s new
policy/signal holds up to abuse, and whether or not we see fair use
significantly jeopardized.
