Pirate Bay cordially accepts RIAA's quest for censorship

[tater1977]

Pirate Bay cordially accepts RIAA's quest for censorship

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-574486 ... ensorship/


The RIAA is calling for search engines like Google and Bing to censor all links that lead to Web sites carrying illegally copyrighted material. The Pirate Bay thinks that's swell

The Recording Industry Association of America's CEO, Cary Sherman, testified before Congress today on "The Future of Audio." Although the minutes of the hearing aren't yet available, Sherman did publish a statement of his speech, according to TorrentFreak, which first reported this news.

In Sherman's statement, he stresses that online piracy must be stopped and one of the ways to do this is by having search engines, like Google and Bing, censor any results that could lead users to sites with illegally obtained copyrighted material.

"Major advertisers and ad agencies announced a series of voluntary best practices so that their valuable brands are not associated with rogue Internet sites that offer illegal goods, and advertisers don't inadvertently enrich rogue website operators," he wrote. "We hope other intermediaries like search engines will follow suit in negotiating voluntary marketplace best practices to prevent directing users to sites that are dedicated to violating property rights."

The Pirate Bay, being one of the biggest proprietors of pirated material, thinks this idea is just swell, according to TorrentFreak.

This is what it had to say on its blog:



Our competitors at the Recording Industry A**holes of America is trying to make sure that the search engines that compete with us have to stop linking back to us. This is really great news!

Right now about 10% of our traffic comes from these competiting search engines. With that ban in place that means that our traffic numbers probably will increase. Users will go directly to us instead and use our search instead. We'll grow even more massive. It's really hard to compete with Google, but if they can't index media search engines like us, we'll be the dominant player in the end.

So from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU RIAA, this is great news for us! For once, we support your efforts in something! Let's make sure that TPB keeps on growing together!

Hugs'n'kisses from your pals at The Pirate Bay - soon to be the biggest media search engine in the world!



The RIAA has legitimate complaints. According to Sherman's statement, RIAA is half the size it used to be, "down to $7 billion in 2011 from nearly $15 billion in 1999." Although Sherman admits that piracy doesn't account for that entire loss, he does say it is a major part of the problem, which has led to layoffs, less money to invest in artists, and fewer artists and songs.

"Piracy is not just a parochial corporate problem," he writes. "This is an issue that affects many industries, our economy, our culture, tens of thousands of creative individuals, and most importantly, the consumers who enjoy the music we create."

When CNET contacted the RIAA, its spokesperson cited a report card (PDF) it issued Google in December that gave the search engine an overall grade of "incomplete." In this report card, the RIAA said that while Google made promises to fight online piracy it still continues to "receive financial benefits from sites and applications that engage in piracy and place artificial road blocks in rights holders' efforts to protect their content online."

However, the RIAA still believes Google is not giving up in the battle against piracy.

"Let us be clear: there is no doubt that Google has taken productive steps to combat content theft online and we are one of many that have commended these improvements," the RIAA wrote in a blog post in April. "These efforts are encouraging and give us hope that Google is truly committed to working with those of us that produce the content that Google users want to see and hear."

Maybe if all sites that offer illegally copyrighted material welcome the idea of search censorship as happily as The Pirate Bay has, at least some of the RIAA's dilemmas would be solved.

[Rick]

Damn. Glad I've got them bookmarked.