Organized Piracy In Academic Publishing

Simon Oxenham writes about organized piracy in academic publishing. The comments which follow the article range from condemning to supportive of Alexandra Elbakyan's work.

-DD

Microsoft Technet Subscriptions Ending

Joab Jackson reports that Microsoft will be eliminating TechNet Software Subscriptions . For about $200, this allowed students and developers to obtain sample copies of software.

Andy Patrizio believes Microsoft is eliminating the subscription option because of piracy and other abuse . Patrizio notes that Microsoft has created an evaluation center which should replace most of the functionality of the TechNet service, while eliminating some of the piracy opportunities.

-DD

Google Removes Over One Million Pages Per Month

ComputerWorld reporter Jaikumar Vijayan reports that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is complaining that "Google Piracy Policies Are Lacking." Quoting Vijayan:

• According to Google, Microsoft or its representatives have asked Google to remove more than 2.5 million URLs, or a median of 48,700 URLs per week, from its search engine results since July 2011.
• The next highest requester was NBC Universal, which asked Google to remove about 1 million URLs over the same period.
• The RIAA requested that some 416,000 URLs be blocked during that time.
• In all, a total of about 2,400 copyright owners have put in URL removal requests covering about more than 24,300 domains since last July.
• Google noted than it complied with 97% of takedown requests at an average response time of 10 hours or less.

Vijayan notes that the RIAA uses statistics from Google's Tranparency Report listing copyright removal requests. The report lists the major requesting agencies and offending Web domains.

Google also maintains reports on governmental requests for user data, which includes statistics on Google's compliance rate for each nation, and statistics on the number and timing of Google traffic from each major nation.

-DD