Studios Accuse Google Of Aiding Piracy Through Keyword Sales: Report

This is a little tortured but let’s try to unravel it … Some half-dozen major media companies — News Corp., Sony, Viacom, GE/NBCU, Disney, and Time Warner — are accusing Google of benefiting from pirated films, the WSJ reports. The accusation stems from a civil lawsuit by the studios against two men accused of operating sites that helped people access copyrighted material illegally. In sworn statements, the two “indicated” that Google reps sold ads to the now-defunct sites (EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com) knowing the use and that sales reps “had a close relationship” with the pair. They said that Google reps supplied them with keywords (my favorite: “bootleg movie download.”) A Google deposition that is sealed supports the pair’s statement, according to the Journal’s sources. The amounts involved are relatively small by Google standards — Google is said to have made $809,000 from the advertising deal with the two.
The studios recently complained directly to Google, demanding an end to any similar efforts. The Journal reports that Google responded last Friday and in a conference call with studio reps promised to “remove certain ads the companies objected to, create a list of approved advertisers and refrain from selling keywords used by rogue sites to lure users to pirated material.” Google will train ad sales people to recognize similar potential problems and monitor keyword sales internally.
Google’s official statement to the Journal: “We are continually improving our systems to screen out ads that violate these policies.”Also, that advertisers already are prohibited from promoting the sale of “copyright infringing materials.”
— The case is interesting from another perspective: the men are not charged with hosting illegal content but with selling a software program that searched free p2p nets for material.
— It also sheds a little light on Google sales practices. The company saw the traffic the sites were getting and sales reps contacted them to offer keywords that would “stoke” traffic.

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