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It would be nice to know whether and how Google evaluates "fair use" as an exception to copyright. There are many varieties of fair use and all are very subjective in nature. Not an easy call.

flowney, on 26 May 2012 - 01:42 AM, said:

My guess? They come down erring on the side of the conglomerates, not the consumer.

"[W]e recently rejected two requests from an organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper's review of a TV show,"

OMG.....2, That's just fantastic stuff Google seeing that was over how many requests approved and acted on The corporate overlords are starting to get their way.

My thoughts on this are like this, The internet was intended for PEOPLE to share information, if they want to do business on it, they do it our way when in our space. If you don't like that, keep with your old business models and see how things turn out for ya.

Write a book. Make a movie. Make a CD. Try to get paid for doing those things. THEN tell me whether it's 'fair use' for the first person who BUYS your book, your CD, your movie to share it IN ITS' ENTIRETY with his or her 40 million closest friends.

It is easy to deflect your guilt by blaming large, faceless corporations for greed in wanting you to actually PAY for these things, but you all forget one thing. Corporations don't make movies, or books, or music.

Actors do. Musicians do. Authors and poets do. Painters do. Sound technicians do. Directors and gaffers do. Schoolteachers and professors do.

You aren't stealing from faceless corporations. You are stealing from the very people who are the creative soul of our nation (and the world). You are stealing from people that have struggled and lived lives of economic hardship to pursue a career with no guarantee of a pension, or even a regular paycheck. That they have FINALLY made it to the top (or at least, far enough up to have released ANYTHING in a digital form) has only happened because, during their formative years, they worked for industries that could AFFORD to pay them this pittance because you USED to buy its products.

Think before you steal that next e-book. Or that next CD. Or that movie. Think about the people that MADE them. Not the corporations that sell them to you. You can't hurt the latter without hurting the former.

flowney, on 26 May 2012 - 01:42 AM, said:

Chances are that's not really the issue. It seems like the targets for the requests are obvious violators like torrent sites. Not that it really matters since those sites generally have their own search engines and folks are happy to use that

Dikiross, on 27 May 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

The folks that would download stuff will just say that they were never going to pay for it anyway so said folks were never going to get their $14.99 and still aren't so they aren't 'stealing' anything from anyone since you can't steal what they don't and were never going to have.

Which is why it is so hard to stop these folks using moral arguments. THe only ones you can stop are the ones that say they do it because of time delays. Like the folks in the UK getting US tv shows that won't show up there for another year. Get all shows up on legal sources like iTunes from first airing in all markets and you destroy that argument and some of them might actually use the legal sources.

Another argument, especially for tv, is that it doesn't matter what they do because they aren't a ratings viewer. So take that out of the game and have nets actually count the legal online viewers in the game. Some of those folks might use the legal sources.

and so on

Dikiross, on 27 May 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

Well....Technically... stealing is taking an item and never returning it. Like a Picasso or a piano. Piracy on the other hand is just making a copy from the original. So stealing is out because the original is still there.