Google and the DMCA

[trochee]

A friend of mine wanted to know about DSS file formats, and how one might go about using them for (e.g.) speech recognition software.

So I put in dss wav converter into Google, as is my wont, and got back a list of interesting links.

But at the bottom of the page was this message:

In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.

As I said to my friend: what the fuck is going on here?

Why is Google taking out links, even if they are infringing? Google should be covered, you'd think. But maybe they don't feel like their collective ass is covered. Maybe that's why they link to Chilling Effects.

If you happen to own a senator, have them look into this DMCA thing, eh?

Comments

[elwe.livejournal.com]

Of course, the complaint they link you to lists the banned URLs, so effectively Google is still linking to them, in a perfectly legal way.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. As it turned out, the link wasn't useful anyway, but it still bothers me -- and further highlights the poor thinking in the DMCA:

It's often easy to circumvent by big players like Google (who have a good legal department and clever web programmers), but also allows the big media oligarchs to come down hard on the truly problem places: ten-year-old file-swappers.