Google begins filtering searches for torrents
If you’ve tried searching for anything torrent related on Google recently, you may have noticed a strange message crop up during your search. It seems that Google is taking upon itself to make the world legal by filtering searches that contain anything torrent related.
The message in question reads “In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.”
Very, very odd, if I do say so myself. Google has decided that torrents must be illegal in every other country of the world and has decided to impose US laws on everyone.
Torrentfreak has investigated the links provided by Google, neither of which were of much help. Google sees this act as protecting the rights of the content owners and I’m sure it has received complaints but it couldn’t have been that bad, just look at all the copyrighted material on YouTube (owned by Google).
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August 8th, 2007
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August 9th, 2007
I don’t think Google is doing anything more than filtering requests for or related to specific torrent content — undoubtedly those where the original content creator/provider slapped Google with a cease and desist order. I can’t blame Google for following the letter of the law.
Why do I claim this? Well, I submitted the following query keywords to Google, “warez torrent”. That ought to trigger just about any serious broad filter on torrents, wouldn’t ya think? The results were (in part):
***
Full Games, Warez, Cracks, Serials, Torrents, MP3, Downloads and …
Full Games, Warez, Torrents, Software, Cracks, Serials, MP3, Downloads and Free Porn at Softlinkers aka Beasty’s Portal.
http://www.softlinkers.org/ – 87k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
CRACKHELL.COM – CRACK SERIAL WAREZ XXX TOPLIST
Coding : GFX : Hacking : MP3 : Torrent : Warez : XXX. Rating : 1.9 Rating : 1.9 Rate It! 3, 13. 31, Torrent search crawler Torrent Search Engine bittorrent …
crackhell.com/ – 40k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
APPZPLANET DOWNLOADS – WAREZ CRACKZ SERIALZ FULL APPZ TORRENT …
http://WWW.APPZPLANET.COM – WAREZ FULL APPZ TORRENTS CRACKZ SERIALZ SOFT RAPIDSHARE.
http://www.appzplanet.com/ – 98k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this
***
and went on for the rest of page one and at least ten more pages of search results.
Let’s get real folks! That little test that took me about 10 seconds completely disproved the absurd statement, “It seems that Google is taking upon itself to make the world legal by filtering searches that contain anything torrent related.”
I expect better from TECHBLORGE!
Regards,
Mr. Wizard
August 9th, 2007
I said torrent, not warez torrent, it seems that only very specific searches are being checked, I only checked torrent, not combinations of keywords.
We’ll do better next time but don’t expect every possible combination to be cross checked.
August 9th, 2007
The filtering is not as widespread as I initially thought but it is present, searches for torrent clients and files themselves are filtered.
It’s there but it doesn’t work for every search…
October 12th, 2008
As long as google is hosted in US they’ll kind of have to follow the laws of the US.