Google wins right to steal your work

Analysis Google structures its entire organisation to avoid privacy laws, minimise taxes and de-risk itself from competition oversight*. Today Google’s European supremo hinted that being in China might be less of a hassle, and that losing Google would serve us Europeans right for being so backward.
Of course, it’s a sheer coincidence that Google exec Matt Brittin’s aggressive comments follow the news that the European Commission is likely to file a formal complaint into the bundling of Google applications with its dominant Android platform this week.
So you’d sod off to China to escape the EU, Google? Really?
Android is more complex. The base platform is open source, and anyone can download the AOSP code, compile it, and make a phone or tablet. Google wouldn’t even know that you’d done it. But the value is increasingly in the services layer, and this in turn has become conditional on what Google dictates.
If you want fast accurate location data, your device needs Google Play Services. If you want the best app store, that’s Google’s. Some apps will just refuse to run. They’re all part of the proprietary binary package that comes from Google, called Google Mobile Services (GMS). The conditions for meeting this are nominally administered by a third party. Such conditions are specified in the contract called a Mobile Application Distribution Agreement.
"Android GMS is a big binary blob that you must integrate. Google has ratcheted it up over the past year. When you sign a MADA, you know it will change,” one OEM told us.
There were further complications to this antitrust investigation: nobody wanted to talk. The European Commission had to threaten phone makers with fines if they didn’t submit answers to the EU's questions, specifically about the MADAs.
*Bootnote
In the 2014 Gonzalez vs Google Spain case – which gave us the so-called “Right to be Forgotten” ruling – Google argued that it was that it was an offshore data processing business, and was not therefore subject to EU privacy rules. The actual computation took place somewhere else, outside the EU.
 
So, what did they call themselves before 'Google'..- these people who steal art and music and whatnot... were they the marfia or the nazis or what? It's nice that they can crow publically about it now, I guess, for them, but where do I line up to be a Googler, does it come with a uniform and company car or anything? cos I need that. )
 
They made Google a subsidiary of Alphabet. It was two students that fell in with and expert business man. You don't hear so much about him.

Search using ... er ... Google insists the founders are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Not entirely true! (well true for certain definition of "founder") They only came up with a search crawler program and database system. The THIRD MAN organised them as an ADVERTISING business. You hardly ever hear about the BUSINESS brain, Eric Schmidt, he is the one that got them where they are today.

I've no idea if he has a cat, white or otherwise.

They are not a Tech company, or even a search engine. Their wealth is from ADVERTISING. They are now the most powerful advertising agency in the world.

Android, Maps, Google Earth etc all bought in developments to acquire the data for advertising.

Hilarious

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him, they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001
I don't believe in the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy.
 
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Google owns YouTube ...
Europe's digi-boss tells YouTube to cough up proper music royalties

This is a bit orwellian?
Sneaky Google KOs 'right to be forgotten' from search results
Future generations will surely find the whole RTBF controversy odd. Why would any mature society trust its digital archive to a Californian consumer data processing corporation that sold ads. Did you poison all your own librarians and archivists? Or just forget how to build things?
Or trust them to scan & archive all printed works.
 
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It happens on amazon as well. Apparently people can openly download my book for free. A book that, for some time, was selling a 99c and people still stole it. And amazon is okay with that. I'm pissed.
 
I may be mis-remembering, but what I'm reading here doesn't gibe with my recollection of how SCOTUS works. They didn't hand down a decision, but let stand a lower court decision; in U.S. law that isn't exactly an unbeatable precedent. Not hearing a case isn't always deciding in someone's favor so much as delaying a real decision until a stronger case comes along and does not preclude the Author's Guild or whoever from raising the same or similar questions on different grounds, possibly when SCOTUS is back to full strength, and maybe even with a new judge more amenable to listening to what the Guild (or whoever) argues.

I don't think this fight is over, but the grounds on which its fought may need to shift.

Randy M.
 
A problem arises when they continue to pay royalties to people who have stolen the music/writing to start with!
I DL stuff free, and it shouldn't be free... its becos it's swiped in the first place and the money's already been made, and the product is just thrown up there, so it's now effectively valueless. Like most rock and pop and blues and jazz music for ex.
 
If you doubt Google is an Advertising agency and not a benevolent Tech company?

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The Chocolate Factory took a beating on Wall Street after it reported non-GAAP earnings of $7.50 per share in its 2016 Q1 period, which ended in March. Analysts had expected earnings of at least 7.96 per share. Here's the summary:

  • Revenues of $20.26bn were up 17 per cent from $17.26bn a year ago.
  • Net income of $4.2bn was up 17 per cent from last year's $3.5bn.
  • The Google business itself reported revenues of $20.1bn and operating income of $6.3bn.
  • The 'other bets' category lost $802m on operating income of $166m. This was blamed largely on the cost of laying cable for the Google Fiber service.
  • Aggregate paid clicks were up 29 per cent, with paid clicks on Google websites up 38 per cent. Cost per click on the external Google network member sites was down 8 per cent while cost per click on Google websites was down 12 per cent and on aggregate down 9 per cent.
The core Google business remains Alphabet's cash cow, accounting for virtually all of the quarter's revenues and the entirety of its income. Of that $20bn haul, $18bn came from advertising revenues and $14.3bn from Google's own websites. This is where the drop in cost-per-click could be of concern. With each ad click returning less money, Google will face pressure to increase clicks to compensate.

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via When is making $20bn in three months not enough? When your name is Google
 
For the past twenty years, Silicon Valley has waged a war on patents and copyright. Google alone funds over 150 digital rights astroturf groups, think tanks and academic departments to advance its case for weakening copyright. This campaign has been reasonably successful in the US, as the formerly independent agencies like the Patent Office and the FCC are now aligned with Google, and in both cases populated by former Google employees.
Jaron Lanier: Big Tech is worse than Big Oil
 
Hi,

It depends I suppose on what "fair use" is defined as - how much of a book. If it's just snippets and passages of the book, I'm okay with it. If those snippets add up to the entire book, that's a different matter.

Cheers, Greg.
 
Ha... on that same page is a clip of Microsorft nagware cutting in on a weather forecast.
T'other night I was at an ATM when it suddenly re-started. A bunch dossy screens went past, a timer started. 20 min. wait so I went to another machine
and paid the 2$ charge. Walked back past the other machine and it said something like out of service, contact blahblah. Never seen that before.
 
Hi,

It depends I suppose on what "fair use" is defined as - how much of a book. If it's just snippets and passages of the book, I'm okay with it. If those snippets add up to the entire book, that's a different matter.

Cheers, Greg.
On a search they blank out a randomized thirty five percent of the book, which is usually readable upon the next search.
Yes, I am concerned by this development. It is another nail in the coffin of any artistic worth in today's society.
It is actually a destruction of culture. Civilization started when artists were given worth in early society. This worth is being destroyed by the machinations of one company. The Barbarians are at the gates, and their name is Google.
 
So here's the big questions:-

1. Does this mean that we can gaily download all Googles content and use it for free under the same ruling. Using the precedent established even before the laws of man were invented. Namely the Goose - Gander principles.

2. Is it at all possible that an author could be sued for copyright infringement for using an extract of his own work from Googles 'Knowledge Database'. I know the answer to this would be yes, because Google would probably claim there presentation represented a new layout, which would be Googles IPR.

I.E. the pretty adverts around the edge of the work was new and original and was theirs and since that was commercially confidential should not be subject to this ruling.

3. Do authors have to use additional methods of protecting their work other than copyright. Namely, adding a trademark to each page registering the physical layout as an work of art (I.E. like a painting) or using some other 'commercial' method of preventing (and more importantly giving them a method of suing the arse of Google).

As in, would they include a certain soft drinks or fast food outlet's formulae in their suppository.

Nor would they try to do an Assang - or does it in fact legitimise his actions?

I also wonder what this ruling means for other unpublicised, but 'printed' material held in other places.



 
Interesting. When I raised a concern about this on another forum, populated by authors, the view was 'don't worry, and fair use is the equivalent of the UK/European fair dealing'.

Must say I wasn't convinced even then.
 

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