Adsense Copyright Infringers Is Their Any Control on Google's End?

[weldonj]

Does google have any quality control as to the sites it lets in its network? It seems they have almost no control procedures in place.

Just today I notified them of a site in their network that is ripping stuff off from sites in my industry. Google's reply was that the complaint has to come from the original copyright holder. (Currently the site is not ripping off any of my stuff)

My counterargument was any person with a brain by looking at the site for 1 second could see it is infringing. I sent them 5 examples of it and their entire site consists of copying others articles.

Secondly, google is supposed to be a good corporate citizen. What about following the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law. If a site rips of 50 different sites, each individual site might have very little incentive to take the time to file a copyright complaint but meanwhile others suffer and google gains (short term) from the copyright infringer.

[londrum]

it's unrealistic to expect them to bar sites without going through the proper motions. after all, it would be their neck on the line if they started withholding money from sites only to find that they did it to the wrong bloke. if complaints are put through properly then i hear they are actually pretty good.

[edited by: londrum at 7:21 pm (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]

[The Contractor]

Google could be the one facing trouble if they happened to ban a site without going through the proper channels. How would they know the site did not allow others to post the articles (as I do) or the site owner had permission to use them?

Besides, Google is not the internet police...

[weldonj]

I guess my concern is how did these sites get in the network in the first place.

Is there no quality control? I used to wonder how all the spam sites used to get in there. It seems like in some areas they have quality control but not a lot.

I guess I'm sensitive to the issue because I've suffered in the past with the search engines from sites ripping off my stuff

[londrum]

you want to be proactive and start putting in some basic protections. if you know some php then there's loads of stuff you can do. they're not going to put off a skilled thief, but will they definitely help you sleep a bit better.

first of all you want to stop site scrappers from lifting all your content.

1) put in a bot trap, and link to the trap on every page. then if anything ignore your robots.txt their IP will be banned forever.
2) stick a little script at the top of your page that blocks user_agents like HTTRACK from accessing your page
3) install the slow/fast scrappers blocker script that is in the php library on this forum
4) install bad-behaviour from homeland-stupidity.

you can search for all this stuff apart for the last one on this forum. that's where i got all my stuff from.

[europeforvisitors]

I guess my concern is how did these sites get in the network in the first place.

Maybe because Google doesn't admit sites; it admits publishers. Once the publisher of Lives-and-preachings-of-the-twelve-disciples.com is accepted by the network, there's nothing to keep him from cranking out an endless flow of made-for-AdSense junk sites.

[zett]

I am with weldonj on this. While the official answer "please file a DMCA notification and we will act upon it" looks OK at the first glance, it still leaves a sour taste.

As we all know, Adsense MAY terminate any account for any reason at any time. While they might have no hosting relationship with the content in question, they still do have a commercial relationship. It would be easy for them to throw out "publishers" who are blatantly violating copyright laws.

I guess there might be *cough* commercial reasons for not doing so. Probably they figured out that they *cough* can earn a lot of money from stolen content this way. Pretty much like Youtube (which also lives mainly off copyright protected content that has been uploaded illegally by Youtube users), but with real money involved.

[The Contractor]

I guess there might be *cough* commercial reasons for not doing so.

uhmm...no, there are legal reasons as explained above. You or anyone may be able to pick out "stolen" content with 99% accuracy, but it's the 1% that will cost you millions.

[ann]

To get past the so called legal reasons Google could simply ditch them the same way they do others, as far as being sued for the money (admitted the scammers probably have some very deep pockets) Google could pay them and tell them, like that tell the small fry,..."by and thanks for all the fish".

I do see a double standard in this company whether anyone else does or not....not conspiracy, but something a whole lot darker.

Ann

[tim222]

Just today I notified them of a site in their network that is ripping stuff off from sites in my industry. Google's reply was that the complaint has to come from the original copyright holder. (Currently the site is not ripping off any of my stuff)

You could report it to the original copyright holder and let them decide whether or not to make the claim. They might not care. Some people assume their stuff is public domain once they publish it. Others care, and will make the claim.

[europeforvisitors]

I do see a double standard in this company whether anyone else does or not....not conspiracy, but something a whole lot darker.

A friend of a friend heard a rumor about a rumor that Eric Schmidt's vanity license plate includes the numbers "666." If that's true, it could explain a lot!

[gibbergibber]

-- I guess my concern is how did these sites get in the network in the first place.--

They could have had perfectly legitimate content when Google admitted them, and then went bad as soon as they were in the system.

I doubt even Google has the resources to regularly police the content of all its member sites.

[europeforvisitors]

They could have had perfectly legitimate content when Google admitted them, and then went bad as soon as they were in the system.

Or the publishers added new, lousy sites.

Fact is, there is no way for Google to maintain tight control over publisher quality. And it may not even want to. After all, there's no shortage of junk publications and junk direct-marketing vehicles in the offline world that attract advertisers, so maybe there's a place for bottom-feeding publishers and advertisers online, too. Also, as Google gives advertisers more do-it-yourself QC tools such as placement reports and site-targeted CPC ads, supply and demand should make junk sites less profitable while driving up rates for sites that are attractive to advertisers.

[gibbergibber]

I suppose even if Google did identify and ban these site owners, they would find someone else to register on their behalf.

Indeed, many of these junk site owners may never have even registered as themselves in the first place, and Google adsense ads are being brokered to junk sites by some third party company which prefers to remain nameless. It's so easy to track earnings by channel, one account holder could run adsense on behalf of many different junk sites.