Every adult knows. Give a child a treat and before you know it all others in the vicinity are queuing up crying for the same. And if you don’t play fair with the goodies, feet are stamped until you do.
Google has been handing out treats too lately, and like parents everywhere it’s now realizing that when you do something for one and not another, you get accused of discrimination.
As usual the problems center around piracy. During October and after years of applying metaphorical Band Aids, Google flicked its algorithmic wrist, pirate sites were demoted, legal content was promoted, and the creative industries rejoiced. Well some did at least.
Less than a month has passed and now Google is suffering fresh wailing in its other ear, this time from the porn industry. Entirely predictably the skin-flick pushers say they too want a piece of the piracy put-down pie.
According to the BBC, “prominent figures” in the porn industry are now demanding that Google does for them what the search engine just did for the audio-visual sector.
“Our whole industry has been turned upside down due to the stealing of adult content,” studio owner and actress Tasha Reign told the corporation.
But if Google’s movie and TV show issues are complex, that’s nothing when compared to getting friendly with the porn industry. Firstly, Google has begun placing ads at the top of search results when people search for TV shows such as Game of Thrones. Friendly links therein direct users to legal sources.
That is not going to happen with porn – Google forbids it. In fact, AdWords doesn’t even allow promotions for dating or international bride services. Good luck with Gangbangs of New York and Saturday Night Beaver.
Secondly, the porn industry is virtually impossible to navigate. While the MPAA and IFPI might have the luxury of speaking for the major studios and 90%+ of the recorded music sector, no such coordination exists in the porn industry. Reaching consensus on what precisely should be done could prove impossible.
Then comes the issue of demoting sites. The ‘pirate’ enemy cited most often by the adult industry are so-called tube sites but that raises even more complex issues, not least since some of the biggest companies in porn own several of the largest tube sites.
Throw in the fact that many tube sites carry both licensed and unlicensed content and any demotion could hit legitimate creators’ distribution strategies of using thousands of adult movie clips to drive traffic to external sites.
But whatever the complexities are, they are all completely moot. When approached by the BBC on the topic, Google declined to comment – period. The search engine wouldn’t be drawn “on any aspect” of the discussion, a sign that in this case the porn industry isn’t going to get what it wants.
“By working with adult companies, Google could ensure the content that is seen contains age restrictions, unlike pirated content,” protests Tasha Reign.
Tumbleweed, stage left…..
