... No, it seems to think that particular law is unjust, and as responsible citizens, they are duty-bound to fight it.
Leave it to an executive of the MAFIAA (Michael O'Leary) to contort basic civic principles to slander anyone who stands up against their ridiculous, rights-trouncing mode of operation.
I'm not sure if it's doublespeak or logic. Is the MPAA above America's laws when it pays congressman to vote for specific law proposals? Or is it logic that no one should be above the law, even if law is paid for by certain industries?
Google does what is in Google's interests. Remember how Google vowed to fight for Net Neutrality until it became against their business interests in the mobile arena?
Google is "duty-bound" only to its shareholders. All the copyright-mafia needs to do is to find a way in which it becomes in Google's best interest to not fight that law, and they will change their "ethical" stance faster than you can say "u-turn".
Do you know what the revenue sources are for a lot of the pirate movie websites?
Google AdSense.
And for software...
From what I've seen, Google often displays crack sites on the first search page for software. 1st place result for author, 2nd,3rd,4th,5th,6th,7th result for crack sites.
In my own testing, I've found that at least 30% of buyers search for crack 1st, and when they can't find it, then they buy.
Google does this for two reasons:
1. There is significant revenue involved here. 2. There is significant relevancy involved here. As people gladly want to use pirated stuff to get out of paying, and want to see these results.
Google is not fighting for you. They are fighting for themselves.
Appeals to free speech and chilling effects are at best temporary measures in the fight against Protect IP and domain seizures. Even if we win this time it will keep coming back in modified form; the only way defeat it for good is to convince Washington that artists are in fact thriving, that piracy is not the real problem, and that takedown efforts are not in the interest of society. We in the tech world know this, but we are doing a poor job of making ourselves heard in Washington, and this needs to change.
More likely: big money bought the bill and the "starving artist" facade is a convenient and facile deceit. Like all good bought laws, it works loosely on a philosophical scale, has emotional appeal, and is difficult to argue without getting into the weeds of changing business models, the way the internet works, etc.
I'm a big fan of politics (micro and macro) and philosophy, mainly because I love studying how people make group decisions. Over the past couple of years I've become more and more convinced that humanity has entered a time where things are changing so fast that the average guy isn't fully aware of how he's getting screwed over. The only saving grace is that older people can see the changes more clearly. With transhumanism on the way, Google and others creating the Borg in the cloud, and governments snooping into every little thing we do, it's almost like the previous 2500 years we have been studying very hard at how freedom and virtue inter-relate, and now comes the test.
Sure hope we do well.
barring a few nutjobs, i've the idea most politicians are significantly less naive than they let show.
They're the same people, after all -- look at the composition of the Obama DOJ if you don't believe me.
I don't know what motive Google has for fighting it, but I'm glad they are nonetheless
In my mind, making a person who provides a hyperlink responsible for the content of that link is just insanely wrongheaded and bespeaks a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the web.
People commit serious crimes with all kinds of things, screwdrivers and wire ties, let's say. Do we penalize the screwdriver maker when some crazoid kills an innocent and beautiful child with a screwdriver? No. In fact, we've just recently had the Supreme Court tell us that Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
This law is tantamount to a hitman asking directions to a street address from some passer-by, and then making the passer-by legally a murderer.
This law doesn't make sense.
Stronger: This is an existential crisis for them. For as rich as they appear to be and for all the resources they seem to have, the task of curating the web is still an order of magnitude or two larger at least, and for certain strict interpretations of the law, this would simply crush them. And there is no chance that any politician will look at Google and see this, because all the numbers are above the "1, 2, ..., many" threshold for most humans, and the idea that the task is too large for Google will be poo-pooed by politicians if you simply make that engineering argument.
When the government asks for something you should not consider how they want to use it, you should consider how they want to abuse the power. The case they trot out is specious and could usually be dealt with via much better ways via existing law.
If these file sharing sites are conducting criminal activities then they should be taken to court and tried according to the laws of the country in which the site operates.
As far as being above America's laws, I think Google's position is clearly within a plain reading of the constitution.
Any information on what these 'checks and balances' would be?
Checks and balances are in section 3 (f), which describes how to file a motion to "modify, suspend or vacate" an order if the site removes the offending content or the order turns out to be in error.
http://popalg.org/schmidt-response