Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Website publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Please see our DMCA policy for more information.
Ladies and Gentlemen, fire up your word processor and start firing off DMCA [google.com] letters if you've been scraped.
Account TerminationMany Google Services do not have account holders or subscribers. For Services that do, Google will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate repeat infringers. If you believe that an account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer, please follow the instructions above to contact Google and provide information sufficient for us to verify that the account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer.
It would appear that if enough people file against the scrapers, they will lose their accounts.
It's about time.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:38 pm (utc) on Jan. 25, 2007]
But is there anything we can do about the kind of sites EFV mentioned.
A framed page (with the framing site's URL in the address bar)
put this framebuster javascript into your html page header:
<script>
if (top.location!= self.location){
top.location.replace('http://www.yourdomain.tld');}
</script>
However, the comments about search engine snippets being essentially the same type of use as scraper snippets seems completely relevant to me.Also, most of the issues put forth by The Contractor are irrelevant as to the legal issues involved. I can only see that (2) and (3) from the first section are germane to the relevant copyright law. And the implication that the difference is that Google are a billion-dollar company, and you're not, is almost offensive.
What about #5? When was the last time you saw Google or Yahoo "search results" being listed in a SE? Content thieves steal the content to post on "static" pages that are tied to navigation/structure so they come up for search results. Google, nor any other major SE does this. So how is this the same as a SE?
It has nothing to do with billions of dollars and has everything to do with legitimacy. Every content thief out there knows why they take someone else's content, so I guess I fail to understand any argument for doing so?
edited: If you do not believe that having international offices, billions of $, and 1000's of employees along with many patents would not make a difference in a court of law compared to a guy that owns 50 sites that all look the same with no contact info and private whois, you are simply naive.
[edited by: The_Contractor at 6:53 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2007]
Google became a billion-dollar company by putting out quality. What's offensive is people trying to justify cranking out useless, offensive swill by making ignorant comparisons that are nothing short of ridiculous.
Trying to hijack a thread with a foolish, off-topic attack just underlines the complete lack of respect and consideration for other people. That's offensive.
Back on topic, in spite of the fact that creators of scraper sites obviously aren't enjoying it, this move is a measure that's putting a mechanism in place that'll help combat those toxic sites that are doing damage to honest publishers and advertisers.
A better point might be that scrapers allow their results to be crawled and indexed by other search engines, whereas most legit search engines do not.
Thank You, much better way to put it.
Trying to hijack a thread with a foolish, off-topic attack just underlines the complete lack of respect and consideration for other people. That's offensive.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by people/companies trying to get sites well placed in Google because people WANT to be listed there becasue billions of people WANT to visit Google's to find sites listed in their index.
So to change the subject to attack Google displaying "other people's content" - ignoring members' requests to stay on topic - and comparing to justify putting out garbage sites that NOBODY wants to be on or visit or see - that is offensive.
AdSense Policy Update Puts Scrapers on Notice: DMCA May Be Invoked?
[edited by: Marcia at 7:40 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2007]
ps. I love assertive women.
the $$$ value of google is not relevant to this discussion, because copyright law does not make a distinction between the haves and the have nots... nor does it care about stats, bots, meta text, static pages, etc., as joemaxx pointed out.
wrt copyright law, nobody has been able to show that google scraping to make money is any different than other sites scraping to make money... tell us the exact section of copyright law that is being violated... and fyi, ranting is not admissible in a court of law.
scrapers take my content just like they do everyone else, but google cleaned the worst of that up in the serps a year ago.
>>>AdSense Policy Update Puts Scrapers on Notice<<<
no, the adsense policy update doesn't mention anything about scrapers at all.
copyright text translations : when a set of works is translated ( which is legal to do ), the translator may not publish the works without the consent of the author ( or the owner of the rights's to the work ). the translation is only for the translators eyes.
DCMA : when you file the notice, you publicly declare whom you are in reference to the copyright, so name address and numbers are available, do you think the scraper is going to give his legal address away, and when you start to fight the scraper and he can not be found, your odds of winning improve ( you still need to prove you side but at lease there should be no counter )
mojomike
Already did, scroll up and read. Fair use, for starters.
Also, do a little reading up on contributory infringement to see why every single scraper site's account should be canceled by Adsense.
In his 2004 lawsuit against Google, Parker alleged that the search giant violated copyright law by automatically archiving a copy of his posting on Usenet and by providing excerpts from his Web site in search results.However, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled on Friday that under case law, Google's activities, akin to those of an Internet Service Provider, do not constitute infringement (click for PDF of court documents).
"When an ISP automatically and temporarily stores data without human intervention so that the system can operate and transmit data to its users, the necessary element of volition is missing," the court said.
a Pennsylvania judge dismissed a lawsuit against Google brought by an e-book publisher who said excerpts of his Web site appeared in search results. And a Nevada court said Google's cache is not copyright infringement.
But in any event many of you folks seem to have completely gotten confused, combining issues that have nothing to do with each other.
1) Whether google is committing copyright infringement is for the courts to decide (and no doubt there will continue to be "tests".
2) Whether scrapers are committing copyright infringement or not can be determined, and actioned by a) the courts or b) google. While it might be interesting to look at court cases they are completely irrelevant to what google does with scrapers, since they can, and have ALWAYS been able to exclude, include, penalize, to the extent they choose, without any particular responsibility to justify or explain.
3) For those of you who believe in taking a morale and principled stand against google for whatever you allege they are doing, good for you. I am sure you'll be returning your adsense checks to google, or sending them to worthy charities, or leaving the program.
we have been talking a lot about MFAs and I really hope this will help get rid of scrapers.
If Google can boot out most of the scraper MFA's, maybe next they can/will target the non-scraper MFA's - those sites that have no content, just links and ads.
I hope I don't get 'enforced' for having Y and G ads on my site.
It may be Y doing the enforcing instead of G, based on Y's terms.
DCMA : when you file the notice, you publicly declare whom you are in reference to the copyright, so name address and numbers are available, do you think the scraper is going to give his legal address away,..
I think a lot of people really aren't looking for a fight. If going through the DMCA process as advised by Google gets rid of the offender's AdSense account, that makes a lot of people happy. If the process also gets the offender booted out of the search results, that's icing on the cake.
Maybe there is no need for a fight at that point.
FarmBoy
...this move is a measure that's putting a mechanism in place that'll help combat those toxic sites that are doing damage to honest publishers and advertisers.
Yeah, my authority sites need all the protection they can get. Pretty annoying to build an authoritative site that does well with AdSense and have someone else rip it off.
However, aside from Bill's success with some scrapers, has anyone else benefited from this reputed change? Some big money strictly MFA sites are still out there. I'm wondering if there are any teeth to this, if any.
However, aside from Bill's success with some scrapers, has anyone else benefited from this reputed change? Some big money strictly MFA sites are still out there. I'm wondering if there are any teeth to this, if any.
Isn't it a bit early to make a judgment (or assumptions)? The paint is barely dry on the new TOS.
google just lost a fair use defense court case less than a year ago: [en.wikipedia.org...]
it's being appealed by both sides, but as it stands now, it's google that was found guilty of violating copyright law, not the scraper sites.
>>>In his 2004 lawsuit against Google, Parker alleged that the search giant violated copyright law by automatically archiving a copy of his posting on Usenet<<<
not relevant... as i already told you in this thread, case law for usenet posts is not very applicable to website content.
as several people have already stated in this thread, google is no different than the scrapers... and as incredibill himself pointed out on page 4, all google did was replace "MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results" with the term "copyright"... nothing was said about scrapers, so why all the histronics?
the real question here is about framed content, as i pointed out earlier.
it's being appealed by both sides, but as it stands now, it's google that was found guilty of violating copyright law, not the scraper sites.
Thank you for posting the link. For those interested, it's actually worth reading and understanding the case. These things are complicated, but if you read carefully, you'll find that danimal's characterization of the case is by and large inaccurate (one has to read all the words to understand).
Some quotes:
Therefore, the court found P10 unlikely to succeed in a vicarious infringement claim, and consequently denied injunctive relief.
Therefore, the court ruled that P10 was entitled to injunctive relief for Google's use of thumbnails, setting a non-binding but ground-breaking precedent.
It's important to note NON_BINDING.
District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled that "P10 is likely to succeed in proving that Google directly infringes by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs. P10 is unlikely to succeed in proving that Google can be held secondarily liable", and consequently ordered that P10 and Google jointly propose a wording for a preliminary injunction to halt Google's distribution of thumbnails of P10's works.
The above is the part that I think danimal is trying to represent. The actual case has not gone to court, which is why the word LIKELY is used. The case danimal is quoting is for an injunction pending legal resolution of the case. The case danimal tries to represent is for an INJUNCTION, and is not, in and of itself, a case to determine copyright infringement and/or related damages. It's a HUGE distinction, but one that some people won't quite get unless they read carefully.
Finally, a question for danimal. What does your post have to do with this thread? Does it have anything to do with the adsense policy update? Does it have something to do with scrapers? Does it have something to do with DMCA? Finally, WHAT DOES YOUR POST HAVE TO DO WITH ADSENSE?
Curious minds want to know.
>>>In his 2004 lawsuit against Google, Parker alleged that the search giant violated copyright law by automatically archiving a copy of his posting on Usenet<<<not relevant... as i already told you in this thread, case law for usenet posts is not very applicable to website content.
Dan, I guess you missed the rest of the words, and I'm curious as to why you chose to quote only part of what I wrote. Here is the entire quote:
In his 2004 lawsuit against Google, Parker alleged that the search giant violated copyright law by automatically archiving a copy of his posting on Usenet and by providing excerpts from his Web site in search results.
Notice the last? EXCERPTS FROM HIS WEB SITE IN SEARCH RESULTS
Quoting someone and selectively deleting the part of the quote that you don't like to make a point isn't really a great way to accomplish much.
WHAT DOES YOUR POST HAVE TO DO WITH ADSENSE?
Furthermore: It's still hijacking this thread off topic to try to justify running MFA scraper sites. Google Search and copyright is a different subject altogether - this is the ADSENSE forum - not the Google Business Issues forum.
Want to discuss a completely different topic? Go start your own thread in the correct forum and stop annoying everyone here by messing around with this one.
Please stop trolling in this thread, we have important things to discuss about Adsense and your interference and disruption is bordering on being abusive toward other members.
[edited by: Marcia at 5:00 am (utc) on Jan. 21, 2007]
Isn't it a bit early to make a judgment (or assumptions)?
What judgement are you referring to? I didn't say this was a false hope or make any other judgement or assumption. I'm just asking for feedback if anyone's seen anything.
I am however wondering if it is a false hope. Judging from recent history, one couldn't be faulted for wondering if this is another empty cry of wolf. From the recent history of AdSense and it's relationship with MFAs, we've seen AdWords tweaks, smart pricing tweaks, and assorted mysterious tweaks over the weekend and still people keep reporting that MFAs and scrapers are abundant and plaguing them.
I monitor a few MFA sites that I consider yardsticks of whether or not AdSense is whacking sites that exist for nothing more than AdSense clicks and these websites are still chugging along.
Which brings me to my question: Is anyone else seeing a flash of teeth? Is anyone else, aside from Bill, seeing first hand that networks of MFAs are getting wiped out?
I would never presume to assume that the piece of the elephant I'm touching is what I think the thing is, which is why I'm asking if anybody else has seen anything noteworthy.
...Actually one interesting thing I did notice is that Google go to great pains to say that REPEAT infringers may be banned. Interesting way to phrase it.
MB, I love you too and always have. :)
When I read the relevant sections as quoted in post 1, they basically describe the situation as it stood before the Program Policies document was updated. As a result, I'm far from convinced that there will be any change in interpretation or enforcement of the copyright law at all.
No doubt, so far complaints to them have come from Adsense publishers who don't like garbage ads running on their sites. BUT - Adsense publishers are just running the adverts, they don't always *own* the content on the sites that have been scraped from to populate the arbitrage sites whose ads are running on the sites and who they have to keep endlessly putting on the filter.
So it's not so much providing a recourse for Adsense publishers, but for the folks who own the sites that have been scraped.
SO if I catch a junk MFA site running an ad on a site, and I look at their page and find scraped content from one of my own sites, if I complain, it's no longer as an Adsense publisher whining about swill, I can file a complaint about infringement for MY content being run on that site.
Some of us have handled this travesty as Adsense publishers, but not as site owners. No go. But what Google has done now has told us all who it is who should be acting, and how to do it.
...Actually one interesting thing I did notice is that Google go to great pains to say that REPEAT infringers may be banned. Interesting way to phrase it.
This is a whole different ballpark now. It's website owners who are being handed appropriate weapons, and it's more than got teeth - it's got jaws.
I've never seen scrapers which scrap snippets directly from websites. What I've seen a lot is scrapers that scrap content from SERPS!
Is this it?
That could very well be part of it.
As for the question of whether Google will use AdSense account terminations (not just search algorithms) to deal with scrapers, that's hard to say, but I'm inclined to think that Google knows AdSense and Google Search will suffer if the exponential growth of AdSense-driven junk pages continues indefinitely. There seems to be a widely-held belief here that Google is run by stupid people who have the same shortsighted business strategy as the make-hay-while-you-can spammers do. Is that belief correct? Watch future "I've been banned" threads and draw your own conclusions.
When I read the relevant sections as quoted in post 1, they basically describe the situation as it stood before the Program Policies document was updated. As a result, I'm far from convinced that there will be any change in interpretation or enforcement of the copyright law at all.
I clarified some of that in this post [webmasterworld.com] where the AdSense policies now clearly say SEE OUR DMCA POLICY.
Then I also posted about a bunch of MFA scraper sites that I recently reported, it's a public post you can find elsewhere (not WebmasterWorld) with a links to lists of sites that number in the thousands, and they are suddenly no longer using AdSense, which MartiniBuster confirmed.
Somewhere in one of the posts I linked to where even Matt Cutts stated the AdSense spam was being booted which is what this thread is about.
How much more proof do people need?
I have seen them, where the whole original title and meta description are displayed on the scraper sites, which they had to have extracted directly from the pages. However, it's true that some, if not many or most, are taken from SERPs.
So if the engines extract snippets and in some cases it's the SERPs that get scraped, the works are still originally the original creation of the websites showing on up the scraper sites - so they are the ones responsible for their own infringement and violations, regardless of where they stole the content from.
In addition, some of the scraped stuff showing on MFA sites out there is coming via RSS feeds specifically sold to MFA sites or being sold as part of a package deal for "Adsense sites," so those parties are potentially responsible for copyright infringement for each and every site they're selling the stolen content to.
I monitor a few MFA sites that I consider yardsticks of whether or not AdSense is whacking sites that exist for nothing more than AdSense clicks and these websites are still chugging along.
I watch the ads that show up when I type 'adsense' in at Google as my yardstick. I figure if Google is really serious they'll first get rid of ads like "Rich Content for Adsense, Free. I will even Install the Sites" and "300 Content Rich Websites Download them all instantly!" etc.
Which brings me to my question: Is anyone else seeing a flash of teeth? Is anyone else, aside from Bill, seeing first hand that networks of MFAs are getting wiped out?
Nope.
JAG
"Perfect 10 v. Google, Inc., et al. (CASE NO. CV 04-9484 AHM (SHx)) was a U.S. court case", in a u.s. federal court.
>>>It's important to note NON_BINDING.<<<
"setting a non-binding but ground-breaking precedent." it means that this case can be cited in other copyright lawsuits against search engines... it's a preliminary injunction, but it's important, even if rbacal doesn't understand the implications.
>>>WHAT DOES YOUR POST HAVE TO DO WITH ADSENSE?<<<
"With respect to vicarious infringement, the court held that Google derived direct financial benefit from infringement of P10's copyright (in the form of AdWords and AdSense profits)" ...it's proof that google is using adsense to make money from scraping.
vicarious infringment is defined by court cases, not in the copyright statute itself, so it's an ongoing evolution of the law.
[edited by: jatar_k at 6:14 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2007]
