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Piracy Movies Television Entertainment

Film Industry's Latest Search Engine Draws Traffic With 'Pirate' Keywords' (torrentfreak.com) 73

A new search engine launched by the Dutch film industry is targeting 'pirates' specifically, reports TorrentFreak. Every movie or TV-show page lists legal viewing options but also includes pirate keywords and descriptions, presumably to draw search traffic. "Don't Wrestle With Nasty Torrents. Ignore the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent," the site advises. From a report: Like other "legal" search engines, the site returns a number of options where people can watch the movies or TV-shows they search for. However, those who scroll down long enough will notice that each page has a targeted message for pirates as well. The descriptions come in a few variations but all mention prominent keywords such as "torrents" and reference "illegal downloading" and unauthorized streaming.
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Film Industry's Latest Search Engine Draws Traffic With 'Pirate' Keywords'

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2017 @02:04PM (#53789173)

    Then treat them that way. What an absolutely wonderful way to build their loyalty!

    • by negRo_slim ( 636783 ) <mils_orgen@hotmail.com> on Thursday February 02, 2017 @03:47PM (#53789797) Homepage
      Considering this industry, along with most other IP based industries, have long since become parasitical leeches on society and wilp never generate loyalty or respect among any rational thinking individual until we hit a hard reset on the whole affair. Fuck em. Not saying pirate, I'm saying ignore altogether.
    • by Altrag ( 195300 )

      Who needs loyalty when they have 100+ years of government-endorsed monopoly on their works?

      Sure if you're looking for "any movie" there's lots of competition, but most people are looking for specific movies and the monopoly prevents you from (legitimately) getting it from a competing provider.

  • too bad the twats at google stopped their search results site blacklisting feature. any good search engine should have that feature, everyone should demand it

    • by crtreece ( 59298 )
      eliminating domains from a search by preceeding the domain name with a - still works. Was there some way in the past to make that global and/or persistent?
      • yes, google allowed you to have a list of up to 500 domains that would not appear in search results, called Manage Blocked Sites", discontinued in early 2013

    • by Anonymous Coward
      Eh, just skip down to the DMCA takedown part... pretty sure it contains all the good links, anyway.
  • Seems like fool's gold (aka pirate). There's already a torrent of junk when it comes to any sort of search, but that's to be expected from something free. Maybe if they had kept their tactics on the download, they wouldn't have to deal with this streaming pile of nonsense.
  • Why would the Dutch film industry care if people are pirating films made in Hollywood? What is in it for them?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2017 @02:36PM (#53789371)

    The Curse of the Black Pearl

    Dead Man's Chest

    At World's End

    On Stranger Tides

    Dead Men Tell No Tales

  • SEO (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grumpy_old_grandpa ( 2634187 ) on Thursday February 02, 2017 @02:41PM (#53789411)
    So run of the mill Search Engine Optimization, in other words.
    • It's a honey pot using SEO. Only uneducated kids would ever fall victim to such a thing. The real sources of this sort of thing are not advertised on search engines and never have been.
      • "The real sources of this sort of thing are not advertised on search engines and never have been."

        That isn't true at all you can find most of the major indexing sites on search engines. Perhaps you meant invite based ratio sites? Those aren't the "real" source, just a different source and you can still find the path to them on search engines.
        • by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

          "The real sources of this sort of thing are not advertised on search engines and never have been." That isn't true at all you can find most of the major indexing sites on search engines. Perhaps you meant invite based ratio sites? Those aren't the "real" source, just a different source and you can still find the path to them on search engines.

          Nope not referring to any of that and I don't care anymore. I'm not poor anymore so I have purchased all my media for a long time. I honestly don't understand why people pirate anymore anyway. Games, movies, music it's all really cheap now. The prices used to be fixed unreasonably high and now it's pretty reasonable. I can't remember the last time I paid more than $10 for a game. If you want it on day 1 you'll shell out the high price but you're paying for day 1. Patience is a virtue.

          Also pirating in

          • by Altrag ( 195300 )

            If you want it on day 1 you'll shell out the high price

            Most people want it on day 1. What's the point of buying a movie for $5 3 years after all of your friends have stopped talking about it? Sure its cheap but you lose a lot of the social aspect of consuming media, which is more important than the media itself to a lot of people.

            Not that watching old movies or playing old games is a bad thing, and people do lots of that (both legitimately and otherwise) but that's not really what anyone's worried about in piracy discussions -- other than a few of the biggest

      • by Torodung ( 31985 )

        No, a honey pot would be setting up a bogus torrent and tracking all the people doing purportedly illegal things. It's a trap to catch people in the act. This is just stupid.

    • Keyword spamming would be closer to what they are doing, tricking people searching for [movie] + torrent into finding a result.

      I remember seeing a sort of similar page when some pirate search engine got it's page impounded by the DHS/MAFIAA, so they set up a honeypot replacement site that showed your results then had links to legal sources of the movie, and if you STILL clicked on the "torrent" link, it went to a "You've Been Naughty, You're Busted" page.

      • by Altrag ( 195300 )

        I just had a thought for what might be smarter -- put up an actual legitimate page with actual legitimate places you can purchase the content. I don't really see the point of the honeypot links at the bottom?

        If someone's willing to pay for a legitimate source that they just didn't know about anyway, then the honeypot link isn't helpful. Of course a legitimate source would need to be at least streamable (if not downloadable.. ie: not send you off to a physical store or wait for shipping or whatever) and re

        • They thought of that - the "legal" links are legit, they are usually buy the DVD from Amazon or stream it from NetFlix, or the app stores, etc.

          The sneaky shitty part was they are in a tiny box at the bottom of the page, and the rest looks like the regular torrent search landing page, perhaps so that people won't notice the tiny box of legit links.

  • by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Thursday February 02, 2017 @03:02PM (#53789521) Journal

    because.moe [because.moe] is a search site for anime streams that links directly to the legal stream options instead of serving as a pointless exercise in crying about pirates without helping either the movie companies or the consumers.

    Maybe film.nl should try being useful instead of pointlessly patronizing, then people might use it.

  • by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Thursday February 02, 2017 @03:11PM (#53789573)

    So are they going to have search pages for films where a legal streaming option is actually not available?

    One nice thing about classic brick-and-mortar rental stores was it was easier to get older titles (and they were cheap-cheap to rent). The back catalog on online streaming seems to not reach so far back. Rather ironic in a form of media that is so much better suited to chasing "the long tail" due to the low cost of disk storage for a streaming title.

    The problem continues to be Hollywood wanting a licensing fee just for making the title available, where if they were willing to take a purely per-view fee, they would see more revenue. VOD services like Amazon could leave the title up for a $0.99 rental fee forever then.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02, 2017 @03:16PM (#53789607)

    Instructions (if you insist in using google):
    1) Open https://www.google.com/advanced_search
    2) Find all the words: "torrent" or "free"
    3) None of these words: "pay" "credit card" "illegal"

    problem solved :)

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Too much typing. Instead try:
      1) Search on Google.
      2) Click on DMCA removed results link at the bottom of the page.

      The media companies are kind enough to document all places they don't want you to see. Why search for something when they'll do it for you?

  • Arrrr !!! Shiver me timbers matey!! Where's the RUM?
  • There's no such thing. Although the local village theatre occasionally finds itself with enough subsidy for a camera...

    • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      Well, there are a few nice Dutch movies, after all, such as "Vet Hard" or "Popoz".
  • by Anonymous Coward

    If you are going to charge someone with murder, theft, rape and kidnapping on the high seas, call them 'Pirates'.

    If you want to have a rational conversation about copyright infringement, don't frame the argument in favor of the MPAA and RIAA.

    • by Altrag ( 195300 )

      Wow. There's still people trotting out the terminology non-argument in 2017? I'm impressed!

      Language changes. Words obtain new meanings. Deal with it.

    • Give it a rest. The term's been around for centuries wit this meaning. The idea that movie pirates are anything like the same is the setup to a joke.

      Even if it isn't, nobody gives a shit. The public perception of the high seas pirate is a comical adventurer played by Johnny Depp, or a swashbuckling hero played by Cary Elwes!
  • by BlueTemplar ( 992862 ) on Thursday February 02, 2017 @06:54PM (#53791483)

    Specifically legal DRM-free files. I'll be all over them. My GoG library can attest to that.
    *crickets*

    • by Altrag ( 195300 )

      Frankly I don't even care if its DRM-free as long as the DRM is right the piss out of the way. I have no problem with Steam. I mean sure if they close up shop tomorrow I'll be a bit annoyed but that's got far less of a chance of happening than me scratching a CD or forgetting where I put my copy of an installer package.

      I mean given the option, DRM-free is certainly preferable. But I'm not opposed to it as long as its not preventing legitimate usage (I mean someone somewhere will always have a problem wit

      • You should think about the big(ger) picture. Copyright is supposed to be temporary. What is going to happen when that DRM'ed software ends up in the public domain? Are we supposed to rely on people (illegally now!) breaking DRM schemes to preserve our culture?
        http://www.technologizer.com/2... [technologizer.com]
        (And what is the online store's plan to preserve the different software versions?)

        Also, each new DRM scheme and monopolistic store brings us closer to the end of general-purpose computing :
        http://boingboing.net/2012/01/ [boingboing.net]

        • by Altrag ( 195300 )

          Well I'm necroing a half-week-old conversation, but on the off chance that someone bothers reading it anyway, I would like to posit that this is all absolutely irrelevant:

          1) As far as I know, a work entering the public domain has no direct requirement for your specific copy to be suddenly unlocked. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even require the works' owner to release it at all. Only that they can't sue you for infringement if you do manage to copy it. That's probably an unpopular viewpoint around here, but

  • by kaizendojo ( 956951 ) on Thursday February 02, 2017 @08:17PM (#53792077)

    "Don't Wrestle With Nasty Torrents. Ignore the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story torrent,"

    True enough, they're all shit. But they DO say that there are legal alternatives to stream this - which is also bullshit.

One man's constant is another man's variable. -- A.J. Perlis

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