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TorrentFreak’s US Censorship ‘Mistake’ Article, Censored by ‘Mistake’

censoredWhere would we be without censorship?

Last year we ran a piece on a mistake by the US authorities, which shut down 84,000 websites for alleged child pornography crimes.

Ironically enough, this article is now censored by a porn outfit.

Paper Street Cash, LLC, the proud owners of teamskeet.com included the piece in a list of 555 URLs that are allegedly infringing on their rights.

The list was sent to Google and all URLs are now de-indexed by Google.

A mistake of course, since the article in question is totally unrelated to teamskeet.com.

We assume that some automated keyword searcher picked up our article, and that it was indeed a mistake, but conspiracy theories are not excluded.

Luckily we’re in good company as a key SOPA/PIPA post from Techdirt was taken down as well.

Long live the DMCA!

Update: A few seconds after we published this post, we learned that Google reversed the ban after an expedited review. While this is great news for us, it’s also an exception to the rule.

Update: A quick calculation reveals that we suffered thousands of dollars in damages. We’re considering legal steps to resolve the matter.

This post is from the News Bits section of TorrentFreak where we present stories from around the web in a concise summary format. Full TorrentFreak articles can be found here. If you have a tip please let us know. News Bits have their very own RSS feed
  • Anonymous

    why does google agree to something like this?

    • Anonymous

      Automated response goes unchecked before responding.

      • Anonymous

        I meant why do they censor in the first place?

        Google should be neutral

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay

          The DMCA means they have to take down content first then respond when people notice. That’s why this provision is internet policy.

        • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

          Jay, no, it doesn’t. That is the IMPROPER reading of that law. The proper reading of that law says that Google has to inform the person in question “Hey, your site might have copyrighted stuff on it! Here are the links! Remove it please!” if they are HOSTING the site.

          If they are simply doing links off a site in their search engine, unless they are blatantly illegal and MANDATED BY OTHER LAWS OTHER THAN THE DMCA THAT THEY HAVE TO TAKE THEM DOWN…. they can leave them up forever.

          Linking to something is N O T a crime even in the United States.

    • Moleculor

      They can’t *not* agree. It’s the *law* that they have to censor it. Thank the US Government, and the DMCA.

  • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

    This sort of “mistakenly lawful” censorship is precisely why laws such as the USA’s DMCA, the UK’s DEA, and international treaties ACTA, TPPA etc are so dangerous and an affront to civil liberties as well as the fundamental right to freedom of speech.

    I hope you sue their sorry asses Ernie.

    What must be so annoying too, is the fact that no-one had the common courtesy to inform of their actions, ie teamskeet, Google or whoever. TF just went blank on that search without anyone knowing any better except “the conspiring parties”.

    Go get ‘em guys – and take a baseball bat too lol :)

    • http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole

      I don’t know who, if anyone, has said it before, but I’m saying it right now:

      If even a single individual has lawful content censored as a result of bureaucratic ‘mistakes’, the cost is too high. The right to free speech is more important than the right to protection of intellectual property. Civil liberties cannot be sacrificed for the greater good.

      Just like that youtube guy who got censored and his video subjected to ads because the youtube filter caught the birds tweeting in the background and mislabeled it as copyrighted content belonging to Rumblefish. This automated robosigning bullshit needs to go. I understand that the system is in place because it’s physically impossible to proactively monitor. So they need to stop trying. The cost, in the form of denial of civil liberties and rights, is too high.

      • http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell

        Exactly right. Until we create a true artificial intelligence? Robosigning stuff is BAD NEWS. Especially when you get into copyright ‘infringement’ and censorship.

  • Some2

    Guys… “A quick calculation reveals that we suffered thousands of dollars in damages” … is obvious that kind of damage of your site will take down all your business, you have to SUE them all, if i’m not wrong aprox 450m is the number for what we are looking.

    • Goolashe

      They could be just looking into solutions for this to not happen again in the future

      • Anonymous

        the solution is to not censor

  • http://pogue972.blogspot.com/ pogue972

    Contact the EFF (they run the ChillingEffects.org site as well) and see if they’ll represent you pro bono. This kind of case needs to be publicized so these copyright trolls will stop doing damage. Obviously, if this happened to both you and TechDirt erroneously, it is happening to many other sites on a far larger scale that simply isn’t being documented (or noticed) or just not publicized beyond the scope of a small readership.

  • MadAsASnake

    And this is the problem with DMCA. It is unchecked and unaccountable. I’m sure a lot of legitimate stuff goes missing both by mistake or “accidentally on purpose”. Most people won’t know it’s gone. DMCA should never have been permitted without safeguards for exactly these cases

  • Aerg

    “Update: A quick calculation reveals that we suffered thousands of dollars in damages. We’re considering legal steps to resolve the matter.”
    I loled.

  • Kkkkkkkk

    “A quick calculation reveals that we suffered thousands of dollars in damages. We’re considering legal steps to resolve the matter.”

    and don’t forget to get the FBI to seize all their property before actually being proved of any wrong doing

    • Camilo

      And send a couple of helicopters, and an anti-terrorist squad of big guys with big guns. Oh, and just for the lols, tell the big guys with the big guns that there are likely bombs in the building!

  • anonymous

    Senator Orrin Hatch says the Government should blow up computers without due process to combat online piracy. http://www.dethronehatch.com/orrin-hatch-is-no-friend-of-the-internet/

    • http://twitter.com/LokiRaziel Brandon Strangfeld

      Senator Orrin Hatch needs to step down and enter an Amish retirement home, no computers as far as the eye can see lol

  • Anonymous

    Yet another reason why the DMCA should be repealed.

  • http://twitter.com/hemo_jr Matt Hickman

    Pls sue for enough money to break Paper Street Cash, LLC. And don’t settle for less. And if you could get is CEO arrested and held without bail, that would be a bonus. Hopefully, he lives somewhere he can be extradited.

  • Anonymous
  • Anonymous

    “A quick calculation reveals that we suffered thousands of dollars in damages. We’re considering legal steps to resolve the matter.”

    Please do. I would applaud your tying up their lawyers. Rope would be preferable, but I suppose a lawsuit would do as well.

  • Harzle

    Unless I’m reading that list of URLs wrong, number 533 is ONE OF THEIR OWN URLS.

    • Anon

      You are right.

      “533. http://www.teamskeet.com/t1/”

      “Then there’s a really bizarre one. Entry 533 on the list is… TeamSkeet’s own website. I don’t know how much Armovore charges Paper Street Cash, but they deserve a refund. ” ~techdirt

      • techanon

        I think it’s a whitelist that got mistaken as a blaklist then.

  • Zit Man

    Civil lawsuit against teamskeet. I hope they’ve lawyered up.

  • http://twitter.com/hemo_jr Matt Hickman

    You didn’t suffer thousands of dollars in revenue loss, you suffered millions. Using RIAA style logic, during the time that the article could not be found on Google, potentially every Google query on any word in the page would mean another visitor,

    And certainly you would have monetized this by adding more advertising. You can then further assume that each visitor you had, clicked on every advertising link and bought something.

    And that each visitor would have made yours their home page, subscribed and followed you on twitter, facebook and digg. That you have lost the good will of everyone of those visitors. So you not only have lost potential revenues, potential growth, but the good will of those potential visitors.

    And with all that potential growth and increased visitor volume, you would have been able to launch a Facebook sized IPO. You have lost more money than is easily calculated.

    Heck, don’t sue for millions, sue for billions!

    • DannyUfonek

      Beat the last penny out of them, those MAFIAA bitches must suffer. They must suffer so much that they won’t be even able to beg after you’re finished with them. They will have to work in debt slavery and all of their worldwide comrades too.

    • bear

      Matt, you are da Man!!!

  • Guest

    Didn’t know about teamskeet pornsite… Google is evil.

  • Armovore

    Ernesto,

    Please sincerely apologize for the error. This was not intentional, we have no intention of restricting your Free Speech, in fact we are an avid support of it having donated to some of the EFF’s Project’s such as Tor. We discovered your URLs during our audit on Sunday well before the TechDirt article was published. Evidence below:

    Reinstate requested through [#949646034] – Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:56:41 -0800
    Reinstate requested through Contact @ Google – Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:22:52 -0800 (PST)
    Reinstate Approved – Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:48:21 -0800

    • Kr0nZ

      You miss the point, even if one legal site gets censored for half a second because of your heavy handed tactics, that’s is TOO MUCH COLLATERAL DAMAGE.
      Do WE get a chance to say something was a mistake before your friends in the suits try too sue what little money we have out of us…. NO.
      You deserve every bit of bad publicity you get because of your reckless actions.

    • Zit Man

      I hope you burn. 2 days of downtime from Google = Millions in lost ad revenue!

    • Anonymous

      don’t censor anything

      there is no other way

  • Tramorzool

    I was desperately searching for your article but I couldn’t find it because it was censored! I was going to buy thousands in torrentfreak merchandise too! But I no longer have the money due to a gambling scheme. Nonetheless, I would like it to go on record for your action against Google that torrentfreak.com would have had $10,000 in purchases by me but for Google’s negligence.

  • Pingback: TorrentFreak’s US Censorship ‘Mistake’ Article, Censored by ‘Mistake’ | U Torrent Free Download

  • Anonymous

    lol, sounds like an epic mistake to me bro lol. Epic.
    Gone-Anon.tk

  • Anonymous

    “Update: A quick calculation reveals that we suffered thousands of dollars in damages. We’re considering legal steps to resolve the matter.”
    Hitting them with their own weapons. I like it. *evil laugh*

  • Guest

    Please, oh please, for the love of the interweb, sue their asses

  • Guest

    Copyright used for censorship… Nothing new! Please sue them.

  • ANoiX……….

    good luck….tf

    bleed them ……like they would do to us.

  • Pingback: TorrentFreak, Techdirt Reinstated, Armovore Apologizes | Best Seedbox

  • Fakdbrigdhdh

    Don’t you all find it ironic and hypocritical that Google is willing and eager to conform to questionable US censorship regulations, and yet took the “holier than thou” mentality when China wanted censorship in their search results?

    Do you remember the hoopla when Google “acted in the will of the people” and “preferred to leave the Chinese market” rather than conforming to unjust censorship?!

    • DaTroof

      This just shows that Google is fake and their intentions are not in the will of ‘the people’ but rather bending over and working hand in the hand with US government.

      F*ck them, F*ck the government.

    • http://Not.Telling/ Kr0nZ

      well I can understand them censoring stuff in China (not that I agree with it), they had two choices either be censored entirely or censor specific links.
      Obviously because Google is an advertising company, they would prefer to have some Chinese than none

      • http://twitter.com/LokiRaziel Brandon Strangfeld

        i also prefer some Chinese to none when I go to the buffet…

  • Anonymous

  • Pingback: The Technology Blog: TorrentFreaks US Censorship Mistake Article Censored by Mistake

  • http://twitter.com/happyizpunjai happy

    Google is in ICE jurisdiction since they run under .com.. Therefore letting the government threaten them by forcing them to block certain sites.

  • Anonymous

    FACEBOOK IS BLOCKING IT TO!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Anonymous

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  • Harquebus

    The virtual evolution continues. May the most adaptable win, us.

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