Tech Review – Tutorials – Gaming
Documents released by whistleblower Zachary Vorhies suggests that Google actively blocked hundreds of sites, including TorrentFreak, from its Google Now service. The blocklist doesn’t provide a specific reason for the blockade, but other sites are flagged for having a high user block rate or for peddling hoax stories. Vorhies has shared the documents with the […]
Copyright holders would like Google to be more proactive when it comes to piracy. The company should promote legal services in its search results, is an often heard suggestion. A good idea perhaps but, at the moment, some copyright holders are taking things in the opposite direction. The entertainment industries have gone head to head […]
For the second time in less than a year, Google has been fined by Russian authorities for not removing banned sites, which include pirate portals, from its search indexes. After failing to connect to the country’s national ‘blacklist’, the search giant has reportedly been selectively removing content, but not to the levels required. In order […]
This week we spotted an odd takedown request. None other than Hollywood’s MPAA asked Google to remove MPAA.org from its search results. This wasn’t the real MPAA though, but an imposter that has sent tens of thousands of takedown demands, mostly targeted at pirate streaming sites. In 2012, Google first published a Transparency Report for […]
In an effort to make the web a safer place, Google maintains a list of abusive sites that display misleading ads or other nastiness. This list is used by Chrome and other browsers to ban all ads on these sites. Thus far little was known about the targeted sites, but a recently published list shows […]
A wave of DMCA notices sent from a company without an obvious web presence have targeted, among other things, the homepages of dozens of adult-focused sites. Google appears to have responded by delisting the main pages of several affected platforms. Larger ones, such as YouPorn and xHamster, seem to have got a free pass. Google […]
Google has voluntarily agreed to remove 832 pirate sites from its search results after reaching a “voluntary” agreement with content owners and ISPs in Australia. That’s according to Village Roadshow chief Graham Burke who described the move as “Google doing the right thing”. The news appears to come with some caveats, however. Section 115a of […]
Google Unlocked is a new extension for Chrome and Opera that attempts to ‘uncensor’ Google search results affected by DMCA notices. While it tends to work as advertised overall, it suffers from – surprise, surprise – an inability to distinguish between infringing and non-infringing URLs. For many years, Google has been bombarded with requests from […]
Copyright holders have asked Google to remove four billion links to ‘pirate’ search results over the years. The vast majority of these requests were honored. This includes hundreds of millions of URLs which are not yet indexed. These end up on a preemptive blacklist instead. For most people, search engines such as Google are an […]
Google is opposing a recommendation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to introduce a mandatory takedown notice scheme. This could lead to automated censorship, the company warns. Various copyright holder groups don’t see the takedown notice proposal as a good solution either, but they are demanding even stricter measures. Last December the Australian Competition and […]