OT: Google adopts Microsoft ploy!

[Rudy Toody]

A few years ago I was a tester for Microsoft Vista. I wanted to test the media player, but had no media, so I went to Borders and bought a DVD. When I went to play it, media player told me it would not play it because I did not own it. (I had the receipt in my hand.) So, not being one to accept BIG BROTHER type of actions, I converted all computers to Linux and haven't looked back.

Last night, I wanted to catch the latest episode of Royal Pains on the USA Network, but they don't make the videos available for 30 days. I tried to find one of those sites that stream copies until their link is broken. Google returned a list of all those sites that had broken links, but displayed a message that it withheld some search results that violated the digital media copyright laws!!!!!!!!

Censoring searches is a definite BIG BROTHER action. What will they filter out next? Will it be all Democrat or Republican sites? Or other political sites?

And if they are so concerned with digital media copyright violations, why don't they filter out the copyrighted pron movies. Those have copyrights. Everything one creates in the USA is automatically copyrighted.

I feel that Google should behave like USA librarians: don't censor anything.

Censoring of search results is a very slippery slope.

 

[saratoga172]

Weird about royal pains. I'm able to view new episodes the day after they air... Usually 24 hours roughly.

I've only caught the first episode of the season though, so maybe they changed it?

 

[Venix]

Google is compelled by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove links to infringing copyrighted content when notified by the copyright owner. This is an issue of federal law, not voluntary actions by Microsoft and Google.

If you feel strongly about the issue, you should write to your Congressmen about repealing the DMCA. It's terrible legislation that should have never been passed.