This week we saw a story in which YouTube (a Google subsidiary) took away a guy's ad revenue because they claimed that someone else had the copyright on random birdsong. http://boingboing.net/2012/02/27/rumblefish-claims-to-own-co...

Do people still say "google aren't evil" with a straight face inside of comparison with Microsoft these days? I'm curious what Microsoft has done that compares in, say, the last year.

It's not 1999 any more - the biggest company in the world is is Apple ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/aug/09/apple-pips-ex... ) , Oracle owns Java and bundles crapware browser toolbars with the download, and Facebook and Google, not Microsoft, are totally dominant in their markets despite Microsoft's efforts. And if you're looking for a company with really crappy practices, there's always Paypal/ebay http://www.regretsy.com/2012/01/03/from-the-mailbag-27/

The argument they "have to comply" due to third parties and presumption-of-infringement laws may be true. If it is, that is beside the point; that doesn't make it a good action.

When the Feds can come kick your doors down and haul your servers out for non-compliance, what choice do you have? Not to say Google is good either, but the content mess isn't really their making. In fact, their technology has helped more than hindered the spread of content.

That's not what I consider in general, and I don't know how you came up with that reading. I agree that it's not the worst action ever in the history of evil (and most was just stupid), but you're not even arguing the right point: the content was not removed, it was a case of automated copyright abuse for profit:

> "Youtube informed me that I was using Rumblefish’s copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company" http://c4sif.org/2012/02/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copy...

Second, how is Youtube evil for doing whatever they want with the ads in their own website? Sure, they claimed it was due to copyright reasons, but that doesn't make the action in itself "evil".

Google has done a lot of crap, from the obvious privacy problems to outright fraud in Kenya. Picking on that seems ridiculous.

Youtube decided to enter into this agreement with Rumblefish. If Youtube outsouces this abuse, does that put Youtube in the clear? See also: US Army outsourcing to Blackwater, etc. It's too easy to avoid responsibility this way.

Is Reddit evil because they don't share the ad income from a particular thread with the submitter? Doesn't make much sense to me.

The only thing YT did was:

1. Add ads to a video hosted on their website

2. Take part of their ad income and give it to some company

I fail to see what exactly is evil about this.

The basic question that I asked was: Why is MS held to a different standard to the big guys of the internet (chiefly Apple, Facebook, Google, Oracle, paypal/ebay)? What recent actions do we have to compare them on?

Why does it have to be recent? Should we just whitewash the past? It was ten years ago, not in the 19th century. They even have the same CEO.

But in any case, they're still extorting companies using their grotesque FAT patents.

That's recent and it is evil. Microsoft never was completely evil they just put the mighty dollar above everything else including software quality.

I agree that MS is profit-driven. I just don't see how that puts them on a different plane from Facebook, Google, Apple, Oracle, Paypal et al.

If Microsoft uses their power to force future hardware to be unable to boot linux / other FOSS OSes, then that affects me WAY MORE.

So much more that I consider such actions to be on a different plane.

Funny thing, I thought that the DMCA was the legal path. This was not used. And this alarms some lawyers: http://waxy.org/2012/03/youtube_bypasses_the_dmca/

And the "review", supposedly by a human being which failed to spot that this birdsong was not the same copyrighted recording was also an exact legal requirement? And the lack of any appeals process after that too?

I said, after you put nasty words in my mouth, that there were other options, and there are. You're not thinking this through.

The DMCA wasn't used because Google negotiated a separate agreement. Without that agreement -- in which Google also had to give things up -- the DMCA would control, dictating both immediate compliance and a ten-day waiting period before the video could be returned.

You arrogantly behave as if you know better than me. Put up or shut up.

What's a "Coder in London" doing trying to educate a US citizen and resident on US law, anyway?

But as for SO, I would like to see SO close up their data. I don't even think they could legally get away with it. Google has always been closed, so the comparison doesn't make a lot of sense.

Jeff Atwood already quit Stack Overflow.

Eventually Joel would do the same.

Then new business owners would start milking it more aggressively.

But I don't worry about it too much. As soon as Stack Overflow start declining - another, hungrier and more efficient competitor would pop up.

Edit: any reason for downvotes?

I remember Jeff stating (correctly) that Google's "don't be evil" doesn't go far. That SO's philosophy was "do good."

However, when asked why they don't open source their code, the response boiled down to "well, we won't make money then."

Not that any of it's wrong -- and, again I love SO -- but it didn't take either of them very long to forgo their principals in favor of cash.

Not releasing the source code for StackOverflow is absolutely not a "step down the evil road". If they decided to relicense everyone's existing contributions under a less open license I'd be worried.

One is lip-service, a campaign promise: An empty claim that is difficult to quantify; the other is a done deal. The content on SO is licensed right now as a community-commons license.

SO even preps a data-dump for you available as a torrent: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/09/creative-commons-data-...

One very important reason for downloading the data is for simple archiving. If Wikipedia or SO disappear tomorrow, their data will still be in the hands of the public, ready to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Not so with proprietary, closed data that's never released to the public.

Another important reason to download the data is to use it locally and with your own tools. Plenty of people download Wikipedia data for offline browsing. I'm sure the same could be done, at least in theory, with SO data.

Yet another reason is to mine the data in ways that the parent website might not allow (due to lack of knowledge, lack of interest, or lack of manpower).

A relevant point is that should SO slap a paywall around their content, anyone can grab the data and create a worthy competitor. Hence the death of ExpertSexChange.