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Censorship Government Media Music The Courts News

Google Removes Kazaa Links, Keeps Sponsored Links 275

Posted by timothy from the conspiracy-or-happenstance dept.
SanityInAnarchy writes "Everyone should remember when Google removed several links that Sharman (owner of Kazaa) claimed were infringing their copyrights. At first, only real results were touched and sponsored links left alone. Well, that sponsored link was removed, but there are quite a few left on a search for 'Kazaa Lite' that, if they aren't infringing Kazaa copyrights, openly advocate piracy. Well, maybe not quite, but I still can't believe they expect that phrases like 'complete albums,' 'full-length movies,' and 'Napster lives' are to be interpreted as '100% legal.'"
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Google Removes Kazaa Links, Keeps Sponsored Links More

Google Removes Kazaa Links, Keeps Sponsored Links

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  • Sic Transit Gloria Kazaa (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Empiric ( 675968 ) * on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:08PM (#6889886)
    When Napster did it, it was cool and unique.
    When Kazaa did it, is was merely cool.
    When Kazaa Lite did it, it was down to just another corporation, profiting from piracy.

    Besides, last I heard, the Kazaa network is rapidly becoming useless, probably due to most everyone going "read-only". And probably everyone on Slashdot knows what the obvious, technically-properly-done successor is, so I won't even mention it.

    • Re:Sic Transit Gloria Kazaa (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:16PM (#6889928) Homepage Journal
      And probably everyone on Slashdot knows what the obvious, technically-properly-done successor is, so I won't even mention it.

      Nope, no idea. Kazaa has been working great. That and I've been using Irate [sourceforge.net] a lot lately and freaking loving it. Just today I got ten COMPLETELY LEGAL songs and I liked all of them but 2. What technically properly done successor are you talking about?

      • Thanks! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Dog and Pony ( 521538 )
        That and I've been using Irate a lot lately and freaking loving it. Just today I got ten COMPLETELY LEGAL songs and I liked all of them but 2.

        Thank you, thank you and thank you! :D I didn't know about this project, but I just downloaded it and I am on my third song... of which the two first was great, and this one will probably rate a "Not bad".

        This is just so way cool, thanks again!

        Now I'll just compile a list of some bands I know that provide free and legal MP3s and contribute some unless they haven't

        • NICE! (Score:2)

          by Sevn ( 12012 )
          Very nice! THANKS!. I haven't found any live Frank Black yet but it's still an awesome app.
      • Wow, iRate is awesome! Doesn't seem like the architecture is very scaleable, though. I wonder if this concept could be made P2P, while still having a reasonable guarantee that the music you get is Free? I think Bittorrent could be used as a model. The server could store all the available music, and send it out to people sometimes, but clients could download songs from each other when possible to reduce the bandwidth load on the server. That way you can download from other people, but if you use a serve

    • Re:Sic Transit Gloria Kazaa (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:19PM (#6889950) Homepage
      the Kazaa network is rapidly becoming useless

      You must have some hefty expectations then, because KLite is telling me right now that there are "3,914,228 users online | 788,202,332 files (5,910,272 GB)" being shared. That hardly seems anywhere near "useless" to me, and I doubt it's going to get that way for a while either.

      Remember, many of the people on there are not "technically" inclined; they are just average Janes and Joes who found out about Kazaa by word of mouth/email from friends when Napster went under. Until Kazaa's successor is known to the average man in the street Kazaa is probably going to remain king.

    • except kazaa lite isn't a corp, rather a hack of the original 'kazaa media desktop'. i'd rather see most of the people move away from kazaa though, to better alternatives.

      but kazaa is so easy in ms sort of way that nontechnical people like it.

      -

      • I like Kazaa (Lite), and am very technical. Not at all because it's easy, either. It's by far the biggest network around, and that means something when you're looking for more esoteric content. You know, like kiddy porn [slashdot.org].

        I'd like to see a cross platform solution take off and leave the shady KMD and its almost equally shady hack in the dust, but until that happens it'll remain yet another reason I keep a Windows box on my network (but only with NAT behind OpenBSD).

    • Successor (Score:5, Funny)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:35PM (#6890053)
      And probably everyone on Slashdot knows what the obvious, technically-properly-done successor is, so I won't even mention it.

      Actually paying for stuff?

      • Re:Successor (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I went to the music store today and was thinking about buying some... but the two I wanted were $18.99 each! $19 freakin bucks for a piece of plastic with some sounds on it. Needless to say, I did not buy.
      • Taste the irony here.
    • When Kazaa Lite did it, it was down to just another corporation, profiting from piracy.

      exactly how is kazaa lite profiting from anything? its completely free and promotes and integrates tools that in my opinion help the network, things such as the integration of peer guardian, automatic node hopping, AVI preview, auto find more sources... and many more. To say its profiting is just crap
    • As somone on the other side of those ads (LEGAL ones, I assure you), I DO recall a solution to this problem. If the term Kazaa is trademarked (I'm not sure if it is or not), KaZaa can cite a trademark violation and Google will take the ads down.

      Of course, Google gets payed everytime a searcher clicks on that Kazaa Lite ad, so they probably won't PROACTIVELY take them down. Would YOU shut down a revenue source like that??

  • Two different issues! (Score:5, Informative)

    by writermike ( 57327 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:15PM (#6889920)
    Sharman never complained that Google infringed on the rights of downloaders to pirate from Kazaa versus Kazaa Lite. Sharman complained that Google infringed on Kazaa's copyrights.

    Whether or not Google has links to other sites that openly advocate piracy doesn't really have much to do with the Kazaa/Kazaa-Lite debate, methinks.
    • Psst..... both infringe on copyrights!

      The difference is that the other copyrights aren't held by Sharman.
    • All three are for paid services that operate under the name Kazaa and they claim to offer clients for all platforms that will let you download all the stuff mentioned. Are these companies offering a separate network, which their pages lead you to believe? Or a separate client (which they claim works on OS X as well as Windows and Linux)? Or just plain old kazaa lite? Their charges are monthly, which leads me to believe they're offering a separate network but that doesn't seem to make sense here the way
      • I, for one, believe that those links are merely people along for the Kazaa ride, trying to get you to pay for the "service" of billing you. Or something like that.

        I just thought it was worth mentioning that neither Google nor Sharman seem to care about right or wrong, only about potential (however small) for a lawsuit.

  • i noticed this too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuckfuck101 ( 699067 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:15PM (#6889921)
    and it's still not hard to find links with kazaa lite, or anything to do with illegal nature.

    a far more pressing issue for me is why doesn't google remove links for "kiddie porn" or "illegal porn" or "rape pics" or something?

    or is it a case of one rule for one, another for everybody else?

    • Re:i noticed this too (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jonathan C. Patschke ( 8016 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:29PM (#6890025) Homepage
      and it's still not hard to find links with kazaa lite, or anything to do with illegal nature.

      < snip >
      or is it a case of one rule for one, another for everybody else?

      This is precisely why they shouldn't filter out any search results. If they filter only some some "illegal" (keep in mind that legality is a function of locality) links, they are, in effect, endorsing the others. Your sacred cow may not be mine, and everyone's kink is someone else's horror.

      Search engines merely provide a searchable index to content. I don't see how they can be seen as guilty of copyright infringement, so long as the page descriptions are kept short enough to qualify under "fair use". An impartial tool like a search engine is not a place to enforce morality, since morality is subjective by its very nature.

      I should close by saying that I don't personally condone the examples you've given, but the people involved in the creating of that content are the wrongdoers, not Google.

      • abogado del diablo (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ArsonPanda ( 647069 )
        ...legality is a function of locality...
        ...to qualify under "fair use".

        Not all localities have the legality of "fair use", so should search engines be subject to infringement laws there? Or is their moral right to fair use less subjective than other morals?

      • Re:i noticed this too (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cra ( 172225 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @02:54AM (#6891825) Homepage
        The locality-issue is important in all this. Like here in Norway it's perfectly legal to download music or movies *for personal use*. As soon as I start to sell copies, or share my downloads with kazaa or similar programs, then I break the law.

        Another this is this; Because something is illegal, should it be illegal to get information about it? Take drugs, for example. What if I wanted to find out something about the effects of, say, heroine? Would google or anyone else be able to know that I actually wanted some totally legitimate information about the subject, rather than a list of pushers? Would google know that when I searched for "kiddie porn" and "Thailand", I was looking for a place to report my neighbour that I suspected foul play at his holiday? Would google know that when I searched for "How to make a bomb", I just want to see if that stuff under my sons bed can be used to make a bomb and should be taken away before an accident happens? Would google know that I wanted to find out how to totally uninstall kazaa, not to download it?

        Bottom line: It is not illegal to search for information about things that are illegal. I think Internet is too good a place to find out about things to be cencored. And I regret to say that I think the americans lead the way there by suing anybody for nothing. (I guess I'll get sued for saying this. . .) I understand people/companies that would do this to avoid getting sued, but I think it is the wrong way to go.
      • Absolutely. And know Google proves (with each example) that it can filter the results. So when next evil organisation comes to Google and asks to remove some links, Google will have no excuse not to do that. We know for sure that many people don't have the resources to fight for the right in the courts. And we also know that in many cases just some negative feedback was sufficient to force people to abandon their software or web projects. Imagine when would a DMCA accusation do!

        IANAL, but I am not convince
    • Perhaps because if you filter out such terms it would be reasonably impossible, save for physically marching to every university library on the planet, to research all manner of subjects.

      The fact that anything is abhorrent, no matter the severity or lack thereof, is precisely why information on it should be available. Someone typing in AskJeeves "how could you kill eight million Jews" should be able to pull up the text of the Nuremburg trials without risking a lawsuit for attempted murder or copyright infr

    • Re:i noticed this too (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @07:04PM (#6890171)
      "a far more pressing issue for me is why doesn't google remove links for "kiddie porn" or "illegal porn" or "rape pics" or something?"

      Because it's easier to filter out one or two specific brand names than a few thousand different metaphors and spellings.

    • Re:i noticed this too (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Phroggy ( 441 ) *
      a far more pressing issue for me is why doesn't google remove links for "kiddie porn" or "illegal porn" or "rape pics" or something?

      Perhaps because any automated way to do this is absolutely guaranteed to generate false positives, resulting in legitimate sites getting their links removed for no valid reason, which Google considers unacceptable, which means the only way to do it is to verify each site manually, which means Google staff would be surfing for child pornography, which most of us would consider

  • guess what's the funniest part... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:16PM (#6889926) Journal
    in other news, KaZaA users are searching for KaZaA Lite using KaZaA itself, installing it, and getting rid of KaZaA for good!

    • in other news, KaZaA users are searching for KaZaA Lite using KaZaA itself, installing it, and getting rid of KaZaA for good!

      When I installed Kazaa Lite, it automatically copied the installer into My Shared Folder.

      I think that's great, a sort of viral marketing. ;-)

      As to the AC replying to you, I tried a search of "kazaa lite" and I got many, many results. The top two had 107 and 108 people sharing them, took about 2 minutes to download (via DSL; one came at 35Kb/s, other at 13Kb/s), and were the

  • At the risk of repeating myself... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig.hogger@gmail ... m minus caffeine> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:17PM (#6889936) Journal
    ... click on my signature to get the cen$ored google links...

  • Time for us to run our own search engine (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:19PM (#6889948)
    Google is a single point of failure, and the people running it seem determined to fail.

    We need a peer to peer search engine. We could build it out of the current peer to peer network search engines, which all suck, BTW. I think I would put up with long-running searches for non-censored results.

    One method might be to use something like Filter Proxy. This proxy looks at all the web pages you visit and indexes them. If we can share and search each others proxies, our own browsing will be the indexing of the internet, thus avoiding having to write a spider and obey robots.txt and stuff like that.

    At a minimum, we need to get the project started and start using it, building up the databases.
    • Read Google's policy: http://www.google.com/dmca.html [google.com]

      Specifically: "It is our policy to document all notices of alleged infringement on which we act. A copy of the notice will be sent to a third party who will make it available to the public."
    • I think robots should be used for indexing because of privacy concerns (I don't think it's good when anyone can check who visits which website when), and robots.txt should definately be honored by a search engine. There are good reasons to include some parts of some websites from the serach engines, and robots.txt is the way to specify that.

      I do like the idea of a p2p web indexing and search system, but I think this can be successful only if it's fast. (If it isn't fast too few people will use it, and th

  • Of course they are (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evilroot ( 156363 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:19PM (#6889949)
    Of course such phrases can be considered %100 legal. Suppose you sell complete, legal albums from your band on your website. Being excluded from Google results would be quite damaging.

    Also, belive it or not pr0n is perfectly legal and one of the single most profitable businesses on the Internet. "Full length movies" etc are buzz phrases from porn sites, and if Google starts filtering that too how much further is it to content censorship? For a Slashdot story I really don't like the pro-copyright law spin on this article. Terminating links for whatever reason is a bad thing. Go after the sites themselves for infringement, not search engines.

  • Legal trends against google? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zapp ( 201236 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:19PM (#6889953)
    It seems that there's been a trend lately for blaming a search engine for what can be found using its services. It is not google's responsibility to maintain the content of the Internet.

    If i search google for "Child pornography" ... it is not their fault if some comes up.

    If I search for mp3s or full movie rips, its not their fault. They are an indexing service, not a filtering service, nor a content provider.

    blah people are stupid.
    • We're just going to see the same thing as drug culture if this keeps up. Instead of calling it marijuana, we get about a million other words [marijuanadictionary.com]. That's just the tip, I know around where I grew up there were lots and lots of local/friend only words for it too.

      The same thing will happend for cults, file sharing clients, acme widgets, and anybody else who sends a search engine a dmca form letter. It's going to get harder to find things until you know what to look for.

    • Re:Legal trends against google? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sphere1952 ( 231666 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @07:17PM (#6890226) Journal
      Google seems to be fighting back as best they can without getting caught in a legal trap. What they actually do makes a mockery of the law. They remove the links, forward the notice to Chilling Effects, and post a notice about the removal linking to the notice at Chilling Effects. The notice has to contain the specific links to be removed, so within the notice are the links Google removed.

      The people at Chilling Effects don't turn the text of the notice into links for you, so you'll have to cut/paste. Can you blame them? (Don't bother asking them to. I asked, and they're not ready to be the butt of a lawsuit.)
      • Here's an idea: let's have browsers that automatically create links from obvious URLs, like many mail and news clients do. This would also help with Slashdot, since people are so darn lazy. That counts as prior art, BTW.
    • This "trend" started when Judge Kaplan in the MPAA v. 2600 case said that linking to something is a "distinction without a difference".

  • I can't believe people haven't attacked this guy. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by I'm a racist. ( 631537 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:19PM (#6889954) Homepage Journal
    The submitter of this article seems to be a bit of an asshole.
    I still can't believe they expect that phrases like 'complete albums,' 'full-length movies,' and 'Napster lives' are to be interpreted as '100% legal.
    Might I refer you to the first ammendment?

  • Get it straight. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:20PM (#6889956)
    It's not about what is legal or not, it's about complying with a DMCA request.

    Google will remove what they need to in order to avoid a DMCA dispute, the path of least resistance. Any other removals would constitute more work on their end.
    • The do quite a bit more work on their end. They want to stop this follishness as much as we do. These notices are a pain in the ass for them. What they do is to strictly comply with the law and document what they did for all to see; which means that you can find the list of links removed, and who wanted them removed carefully kept in the Chilling Effects database where they can link to it.

  • Google: "Don't be evil" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cubal ( 601223 ) <matt AT problemattic DOT net> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:21PM (#6889963) Homepage
    Remembering that google's motto is "don't be evil", we again see some of their rather odd decisions. First it was "pornography is alright, but hate isn't", now it's "copyright infringement is wrong, but open advertising of piracy is ok"...

    hmm, could it be that "stuff that could get us sued is evil", and "stuff that we get paid for is fine by us"?

    Just a thought.

    • Re:Google: "Don't be evil" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Snowspinner ( 627098 ) <philsand@3.14ufl.edu minus pi> on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:53PM (#6890130) Homepage
      They didn't remove hate across the board. They removed it in Germany, which has extremely strict hate speech laws, which Google was probably running afoul of.

      Nor did they say anything about copyright infringement being wrong. They complied with a DMCA request. The DMCA being the evil thing that it is, they were, quite likely, in violation of it.

      In other words, both cases were not Google being evil, they were the law being evil. Google is not the legislative body in either the US or Germany, so that's not really their fault.
    • Not that I remember every decision Google ever made, but what's "rather odd" about deciding hate is worse than pornography?
      • I'm not saying pornography is worse than hate, rather that "don't be evil" seems to be applied to a rather selective definition of evil. Arguably, pornography and hate are both evil (issues of magnitude notwithstanding)...
  • Kazaa lite is the only way to fly. I've used it since it first came out, not because it "made it easier to pirate songs/movies/etc" but because it came out ad and spyware free! If you use plain kazaa, you're a fricking idiot.

    I don't see how anyone can jump up on a high horse and claim kazaa is better/worse than kazaa lite. Like, its magically not the same filesharing if you're using Kazaa lite. As far as I'm concerned, kazaa is just a crippleware version of Kazaa lite.

    Just my opinion.

  • DMCA Notice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:30PM (#6890028)

    Why are Google always linking to the Chilling Effects website? Why aren't they hosting the DMCA Notices themselves?

    Would they still be in DMCA violation if the DMCA notice with the removed links were hosted by them?

    What about Chilling Effects? Are they in DMCA violation by hosting those notices?

    • Why are Google always linking to the Chilling Effects website?

      Because they can?

      Why aren't they hosting the DMCA Notices themselves?

      Because they dont have to

      Would they still be in DMCA violation if the DMCA notice with the removed links were hosted by them?

      The notice has nothing to do with the offence.

      What about Chilling Effects? Are they in DMCA violation by hosting those notices?

      Show me the part in the DMCA that says you cannot publish said notices.
      • "Show me the part in the DMCA that says you cannot publish said notices."

        It's my suspicion that Chilling Effects (which is composed mostly of lawyers) is waiting quietly for someone to send them a takedown notice for their notice -- although Chilling Effects are being careful not to link the URLs because of Judge Kaplan's ruling.

        If I were a judge and a case like that came before me I'd have a hard time keeping from laughing long enough to write an opinion.

  • Google pulled a fast on on the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m.dillon ( 147925 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:32PM (#6890044) Homepage
    You guys are idiots. Google pulled the links, but they also put a link up to the original DMCA notice that was sent to them which... guess what? LISTS THE BANNED SITES!

    So now instead of these sites being deep in the list of results, they are now front and center, and probably getting far more hits then they were before the notice was sent.

  • forbidden words (Score:4, Insightful)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:38PM (#6890067)
    but I still can't believe they expect that phrases like 'complete albums,' 'full-length movies,' and 'Napster lives' are to be interpreted as '100% legal.'"

    By this logic, SanityInAnarchy's own post would be illegal, as the post uses the exact same words that it suggests should in some way be illegal to search for or index. Once we have forbidden words we have a very small step to forbidden thought.

    One can argue that the piracy should be illegal, but it's a far stretch to say that a link with any of these phrases should not exist on Google. There are invalid uses of the phrases, but there are many valid uses as well, including a group that might not wish to sell their soul to a major label and the RIAA and might want to make their "complete albums" freely downloadable on the Internet. It's a shame or worse that an RIAA mentality might hamper their ability to do so.

  • What if I post the DMCA'd links here? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:40PM (#6890074)
    If I post the links for Kazaa Lite downloads that Google had to remove here on Slashdot, will Slashdot get a takedown notice? If so, will Slashdot comply? Moderators, please mod this up so that it will show up in the Google/Google News search index!

    a. http://www.kazaagold.com [kazaagold.com]
    b. http://mp3download.com [mp3download.com]
    c. http://www.kazaalite.tk [kazaalite.tk]
    d. http://www.kaaza.com [kaaza.com]
    e. http://doa2.host.sk [doa2.host.sk]
    f. http://www.k-lite.tk [k-lite.tk]
    g. http://www.kazaa-file-sharing-downloads.com [kazaa-file...nloads.com]
    h. http://www.kazaalite.nl [kazaalite.nl]
    i. http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm [hccnet.nl]
    j. http://www.kazaa-download.de [kazaa-download.de]
    k. http://www.zeropaid.com [zeropaid.com]
    l. http://www.kazaalite.nl/downloads.htm [kazaalite.nl]
    m. http://kazaa.infos-du-net.com [infos-du-net.com]
    n. http://www.kazaa-lite.tk [kazaa-lite.tk]
    o. http://www.kazaa-lite.info [kazaa-lite.info]

  • Usenet archive is real problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jacek Poplawski ( 223457 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @06:53PM (#6890127)
    Please read this [google.com].
    I mean following fragment:

    FOR GOOGLE GROUPS, YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH MESSAGE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS INFRINGING MATERIAL BY ITS MESSAGE-ID.

    So, they bought DejaNews, they own probably only existing complete (?) Usenet archive, and NOW they want to censure it!

    I don't care about links, if you want link you can find it in many places. Problem is Usenet archive. There is no other place where you can find posts from 1995 or even 1992.

    Dear google, I fsck your link database, but leave Usenet archive unchanged, you are not creators of that content!
    • I read thru Google's DMCA page in your link, and it looks like Google is trying to make it as tedious and *difficult* as possible for anyone to request a takedown. Frex, the request has to be submitted by mail or fax (not email); it has to be identified to the absolute specific link or usenet post, etc. IOW, it looks to me like Google is circumventing the DMCA to the best of their ability without falling afoul of anyone's hyperactive lawyers.

  • Why "complete albums" could be illegal? First google answer for these words was [amazon.com]
    Amazon listmania. Is Amazon illegal by your logic?

  • Google can only return results that are registered domain names. It is in effect a front end to the IANA - In the words of the IANA themselves [iana.org] "The IANA serves as a bookkeeper in recording the assignments that are made. In Internet terminology, the record-keeping service IANA performs is called a registration service, and IANA serves as a registry."

    The IANA of course delegate the right to distribute IP address blocks to the RIRs(RFC 2050) [isi.edu], who in turn do so to the ISPs. Thus any other search engine can p

  • In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [google.com], we have removed 1 post(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint [chillingeffects.org] for these removed results.
  • You can legally say any of those phrases in just about any context you want. Since this is slashdot, I should cover my ass and mention that I do NOT mean anything regarding fire or crowded theaters. With that said, think about it: free speech. I can say "I download full albums of copyrighted material on the internet," and it's not illegal. Why not? Because I have free speech. Now, if I do in fact do such things, that may or may not be illegal, depending on my locale. But the fact remains that if I d

  • Is google good or bad? is kazaa good or bad? are sponsored links good or bad? Is preference for sponsored links good or bad? is preference happening now? did it happen before?

    This has got to be the least coherent afrticle I've ever read on slashdot and that's going a ways.

  • This is boiling down to what is free speech and what is not. What is freedom and what is 'trademark/copyrighted/IP/etc'.

    Of course i was joking about banning it, but this is where we are headed.. corporations will have total control of everything the government doesnt.

    This is sick.

    F-them all.

  • This is unbelievable.

    Just when Slashdot had managed to reduce the number of stories they repeat, they've gone and taken a post made last week in response to the original Google/Kazaa/RIAA story [slashdot.org] and repeated it as a story in it's own right!

    C'mon, how about some actual News for Nerds?

  • Ironic (Score:5, Funny)

    by mantera ( 685223 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @07:45PM (#6890374)
    I just find it pretty ironic that kazaa are complaining about copyright infringement.
  • try this Google search: Google+Chilling+Effects [google.com]

  • Baaah, who cares about kazaa when you have mldonkey [berlios.de], which can connect to kazaa and pretty much all the other p2p networks...
  • It was my understanding that Sharman is based outside the U.S. How can they take legal action against an American company like Google?
  • Google should have known better, Don't Squeeze the Sharman
  • If i search for kazaa or kazaalite i get a link to kazalitekpp.com 4th and 1st, respectively. How did they remove the links?

  • Google is active in censorship, commercial esp (Score:5, Informative)

    by supaflah ( 626661 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @10:09PM (#6890989)
    I have a nonprofit site dedicated to japanese design.
    It was number one on google. it is now blocked out, and commercial links to amazon and other booksellers come first.
    Apparently there is an agreement between Google and their advertisers to give priority to their pages.
    Also, don't forget that google has a well known disrespect for searchers privacy, by placing permanent cookies, and has a long lasting relationship with the Feds, providing profiling information on suspicious searches.
    Proof? Well, don't google for it. Googlewatch.org is a good place to start.
  • Oh hell, people saying things that could possibly be interpreted as advocating the infringement of some copyrights and software license agreements? On the web? We must condemn google for not censoring them! Silly rabbit, free speech is for corporations!

  • DEAR GOOGLE (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I email this to press@google.com because doing this will definitely get press attention. I'm assuming that the engineers and programmers still run Google and that they are concerned about the chilling effects of the DMCA.

    Want to wake up the current population about just how bad the DMCA is? When you search for the DMCA, first link that comes up is an anti-DMCA site. It's obvious that Google is concerned about the DMCA....

    Just for one day change the front page of Google to a page that says:

    ----

    THIS PAGE

  • Leave search engines out of this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @10:41PM (#6891131)
    This is like demanding Enron being removed from the yellowpages. Control search engines and you control the net I guess, this is one of the bigger problems of the DMCA. Linking should not be illegal regardless of the site.

    Let them fight their battles, but leave unaffiliated third-parties out of it. Google has nothing to do with kazaalite, google has nothing to do with scientology, etc. You would think a GOP administration would defend business like google and free speech, but the DMCA has yet to be challenged and Ashcroft has no problem using it for his own end.

    I don't want a goverment sanitized search engine, I want the rawest information I can get.

  • Testing the waters. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Saturday September 06, 2003 @11:29PM (#6891305)
    Google is no longer completely controled by the good guys.

    Honestly. . .

    Who here really believes that THE #1 gateway website of the entire WORLD hasn't been targetted? As we've seen thus far, if you are a Scientologist lunatic, or a Zionist anti-defamationist lunatic, or an RIAA lunatic, then you can make the Google boys jump.

    Any guesses as to what a government "We'll cut your fingers off and dump your body" secret service spook can make a Google boy do?

    Right now, the jerks on the switch need to be very careful; if they remove pages, they need to do it in such a way as to make sure it doesn't raise world ire to combustion levels. At the moment, it's all about a little here, a little there, warm up that pot bit by bit.

    What can you going to do about it?

    Stay aware. Bitch loudly. Seek out and re-post 'offensive' material. If somebody doesn't want something read, then make damned sure it gets read.


    -FL

    --Everybody dies. Why not do it with honor? It's going to suck either way.

  • I don't understand what the issue is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @04:07AM (#6891958)
    Because if you do a Google search for Kazaa Lite [google.com] you can still easily get there and their sponsored links are still there? What is this article about? It makes no sense.

    -- iCEBaLM

  • Best way (Score:3, Informative)

    by zeroclip ( 700917 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @06:10AM (#6892173)
    And still the best way to get some quick warez is searching for: Name Last modified Size Description [type] ex. Try: Name Last modified Size Description Macromedia exe "Some" interesting results.

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