Google's dismissive DMCA communication

[browsee]

We've submitted DMCA notice yesterday. We've received the following communication from Google. I am really surprised to see this kind of dismissive email from Google as the scrapper from Canada copied word for word from my page. What other options are available to me?

Thanks

Hello [Name],

Thank you for your note.

We have received and reviewed your attached DMCA complaint. At this time,
Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning
content removal. As always, we encourage you to resolve any disputes
directly with the owner of the website in question.

If you pursue legal action against this site that results in the removal
of the offending material, our search results will display this change
after we next crawl the site. If the webmaster makes these changes and you
need us to expedite the removal of the cached copy, please submit your
request using our webpage removal request tool at
[google.com...]

Regards,
The Google Team

[wheel]

I'm a whole bunch more concerned about my content being published on someone's servers illegally than I am about how much work those people have to go through to stop the illegal abuse. Lots of work? Tough cookies, my job gets busy at times too.

The law addresses the (C) owner first, which is the way it should be.

As for calling it lazy, it's the law. There's nothing that's inherently better about a C&D unless you're outside the US where the DMCA doesn't work.

[indyank]

jecasc, We do send cease and desist emails to the offender before we go to google or others.

Hosting companies and search engines cannot completely wash their hands off, especially when they choose to hurt the original sites.

Several of these copycats make money through adsense and google is making money through them. Google is even storing a cache of these pages on their servers.

It is not that we go to them directly before doing anything.

IncrediBill has offered a good suggestion but there again we need to fight it out (with money) to get the pages removed.

[jecasc]

jecasc, We do send cease and desist emails to the offender before we go to google or others.

YOU do. And if you do, you are one of those who then get hurt when they turn to Google as last resort and do not get timely responses or just a canned decline response - because many others swamp Google, uploading their complaints in bulk.

People here are complaining the system is not working anymore, when they are the ones who broke it.

[wheel]

Oh hardly. I didn't break the system. The scrapers did. And don't go crying to me about how Google's swamped. They've got enough cash to resolve the issue if they chose to. The people that are profiting from stolen content can pay the freight on this one. And one of those folks is Google.

Frankly if Google's not addressing this issue, I'd love to see a court slap them into next week for continuing to make money from this stuff without addressing complaints...because they're 'busy'.

[indyank]

People here are complaining the system is not working anymore, when they are the ones who broke it.

I don't want to blame them. It was google who triggered all these. Is it moral on their part to send such automated replies because they are swamped by others?

I am also curious to know if it is ok for Google to store cache of these copied pages on their servers?

[pageoneresults]

There is an easy answer to all this: you block scrapers from your sites.

That's just the first step. You also need to use NoArchive and block Internet Archiver. I'll bet most of your stuff is getting scraped from cache.

[wheel]

Is it? I don't know any large scale scrapers , most of the folks scraping me seem to be little operations. Some of them at the mom and pop level. The last round of scrapers I went at, about 3 were on Google's blog service with about 3 page sites, and two were small competitors. I'm not sure these folks even know about archive dot org. But I'm willing to be edumicated on the subject.

[pageoneresults]

Is it? I don't know any large scale scrapers , most of the folks scraping me seem to be little operations.

We'll never know. Why? Because everything that goes on back there in cache is only known by Google and those who are utilizing it. Might as well put up some basic defenses and force those "entities" to visit the real site. Now, if you've blocked their country and/or IP from visiting, guess what? They can't get to it. Well, if they wanted to they could, but for the average scraping bottom feeder, it isn't worth their time to go through all that - or maybe it is?

[Reno]

Now, if you've blocked their country and/or IP from visiting, guess what? They can't get to it.

I have been wishing for years to have the option in my hosting cpanel to block any visitors from specific countries, that I would indicate in a checkbox format (I would block ALL countries outside the USA & Canada); and secondly, I'd like to indicate in my GWT to block ALL results going to websurfers in those same locales.

Yes, I realize that scrapers who are serious can use proxies, but even so, the sheer number of thieves would drop dramatically because many of them, as indicated by wheel, are little mom & pops and they won't go to the trouble to get a proxy.

And as a side benefit, think about the amount of bandwidth that would not be wasted because we would not need to show our sites to people who will NEVER be customers!

If only...

......................

[wheel]

I'm in for some of that.

It seemed like Incredibill was going towards a commercial product for scrapers, but haven't seen anything about that in quite a while. Too bad.