COMMENT: Could Google founders be next in line for jail?

Why hasn't the music and film business gone after Sergy and Larry?

20 April 2009 17:05 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Google's founders could find themselves being sent to jail based on the same ideology used in the Pirate Bay verdict.

Why? Well because the Google search engine does virtually the same job as Pirate Bay by giving you access to illegal files allowing you to download the latest Hollywood or the music industry has to offer.

Want to see "X-Men Origins - Wolverine" before it hits the cinemas this week? Not a problem, jump over to Google type in your request and don't forget to add a simple tag "filetype:torrent" as doing so allows you to narrow the search results down to just the those that include a torrent link to the film.

The result, although a Google search page, is virtually identical to what Pirate Bay have been doing for some time, the only difference is that Google is Google and Pirate Bay is an easy target unable to defend itself against the power and the might of the music and film industry combined.

Now I am not one for pirating music or movies, however I am one for being lazy, and I am one for feeling angst over being asked to pay for the same content over and over again just so those makers can make a bit of extra money.

Take Wolverine for example, if I see it at the cinema this weekend that's £10 for my ticket, then I rent the movie when it comes out - that's another £4.50 to Blockbuster and then if I have finally decided that I like it so much that I buy it on Blu-ray - another £20 to Play or Amazon. So for all that I've paid almost £35. The alternative and more lazy option is that I could download it from a torrent site and pay nothing. A torrent site that even though the founders have been charged with breaking the law is still open for business.

So why have the music and film industries not gone after Google for doing a similar job? Is it the fear that Google has enough money to fight a claim, or merely that the RIAA, BPI, IFPI, and MPAA haven't worked out you don't have to go to a dedicated file sharing site to copy files but just a search engine?

But whether or not Google are taken to court for being a purveyor of illegal files, or people find another source for illegal files, the reason peer2peer sharing is so prevalent is down to two reasons: one people are lazy and two, people feel entertainment is priced too high.

The music industry has shown us that. Look at iTunes, Amazon's MP3 store or services like Last.fm and Spotify - make it easy and people are happy to pay for what they consume. it might seem strange to an industry that has been able to grab money off us in such a way for so long, but if you make content easy to get and cheap people keep coming back for more. They will I promise.

So will Sergy and Larry end up in jail like the Pirate Bay founders? I very much doubt it, but either way until those looking after the content should worry less about the illegal file sharers and worry more about making it easier for us to consume their content.

A movie on day of release at the cinema downloadable to my TV to watch in high-def for a £10 - I would pay for that - and pay on a recurring basis.

Full tags
Comment, Software, Google, Pirate Bay
UK Shopping
Amazon.co.uk, play.com, pixmania.co.uk, Currys.co.uk, Dixons.co.uk, 7dayshop.com, ebay.co.uk
US Shopping
Amazon.com, bestbuy.com, ebay.com

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Comments


  • Check this:

    Why the Pirate Bay isn't like Google...

    http://futureofcopyright.com/index.php?page=news&id=313
    Posted by YeahMan, USA
  • Yes, they are different, and so shouldn't be lumped together. However, if I wanted to download illegally one of the latest films, albums, software etc, then I could go to my Torrent site of choice and look there, say The Pirate Bay. Or I could go to Google and get far more hits by putting the title in with the word torrent at the end, this saves loads of time as I would not have to go to loads of indivdual sites to find my file. So Google do actually perform a better service for Pirates than the actual individual sites. Posted by leancranker, United Kingdom
  • I dont know where you come up with this stuff but the point is that Google indexes all data available to it via many means. Pirate Bay is a target spcific website. The analogy would be to have a city with people in it and a city with people only interested in drug production so the whole city is loaded with chemical factories and drug manufacturing facilities. In a big city you get that stuff anyway , what makes Google so different?

    A person looking for trouble will type in wolverine's new movie on Google and potentially expose themselves to trouble. Same goes in real life. Use real life analogies to find accuracy in examples regarding the web.

    As far as Google's founders , I hardly see them even remotely responding to a post like this none the less actually responding to an accusation that they index data for illegal purposes. It's humiliating just reading the post.

    Additionally you will have to perform spelling corrections next time you decide to write something.

    And on a last note , the pirate bay founders did not go to jail. In fact , they never spent even a night in detention. If they didn't , do you really think BRIN AND PAGE WILL?
    Posted by maz, uk
  • it's £3.95 to rent from Blockbuster! Posted by FSDU, uk
  • When you search Google for torrents, the majority of what comes up(other than junk) are torrents off of the major tracker, ISOHunt, PirateBat, Mininova, etc.
    Unless people host small amounts of torrents off personal websites a takedown of the major trackers would make things alot more difficult (until a new way to manage torrent databases was designed).

    Nothing will stop someone with time and energy who wants somthing, but it can be made alot more difficult for the standard joe
    Posted by Cosmo, USA
  • Any person who believes that The Pirate Bay is no different to Google is unfortunately kidding themselves. The 'we offer illegal things!' marketing of it is the crux of the matter here.

    It's a bit like saying that a phone book full of assassins and bombmakers called 'Illegal Contacts' should be treated the same as a BT phone book, because essentially they both contain phone numbers and it's likely the BT one (if the number hasn't 'added a robots.txt file' - aka gone ex-directory) will also have the same number in.

    The Pirate Bay spent all their time bragging about how they are the home of illegality, and that they were above the law (however antiquated they believe it to be), so it really does serve them right to be smacked down.
    Posted by Rich, United Kingdom

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