GOOGLE ARE PIRATES and FAR WORSE
Compilation of articles/
02.04.24
Also see the other file on that shady company
Google books project
In early 2013, I discovered that part of the 'Aromatherapy Practitioner Manual' by Sylla Sheppard-Hanger was available as a .pdf download from a UK website. I informed Sylla, who then contacted the site owner about this copyright infringement. The owner claimed he "got the copy via google books". This prompted me to search google books where I found my oldest version of 'Plant Aromatics' was also listed. Some years ago Sylla used to sell her manual and mine as a set, this made me suspect both have been copied from the same source. I then contacted google books and they replied that "their link was only meta data and that my manual had not been scanned". After several exchanges, they refused to remove the link despite me telling them that the manual was no longer sold and the version they listed was out of date.
Next I discovered google books had been involved in court cases in the USA over copyright infringement issues. Their system is to do financial deals with University libraries and then it seems scan everything in that library. They do not seem to bother checking if what they are scanning may be private publications intended for a specific audience, or even if they are collections of private papers donated to a library. Google seem to assume everything is there for the taking, some call that stealing! Google claim the law in the USA allows them to do this, yet many of the books and publications are written by authors in countries where US laws do not apply.
My concern is about the people around the world who produce instruction manuals for use exclusively in their own trades. These works can require great expenditure in time and money in order to create them. These costs are then recovered by small sales via fees to students, small business publications etc. Google by scanning such works and making them available via their systems are acting as pirates. They may also severely damage small businesses and/or the finances of individual authors.
Following the court cases against google, it would seem the big publishers will be able to get their hands into googles treasury. However, individual authors may not even know that their hard work has been pirated and thus not be able to claim remuneration. In either case it falls on google to declare how many files have been downloaded. Do you trust pirates? Not me!
Google as an International company have no worldwide rights to put extracts or whole publications online without obtaining permission. This is a classic example of where the UN or the International court should be the ones to pass judgements on issues of International importance, not judges in just one country. Google say they are only scanning “out of copyright' materials”, I do not believe that after my experience of them listing my work without asking.
April 2016: A US court has said that google are allowed to place online the extracts from out of print books. Note that they have already scanned hundreds of thousands of books without permission of the authors or their publishers. Who gave judges in the USA the right to issue judgements over International issues? Do these judges not understand that books are written and published in countries other than the USA? Continued:
Authors, check if your books are on google here:
http://books.google.com/books
Removal request form here:
http://support.google.com/books/bin/request.py?&product=books&contact_type=eb_dmca
Just some of the history and ongoing news on google services
2017: 1.6 million patient records going back 5 years that contained person identifiable information were given to the Google Deep Mind project by the Royal Free hospital, London. The Information Commissioner's Office reported that the hospital had breached privacy regulations but did nothing much about it. https://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/four-lessons-nhs-trusts-can-learn-from-the-royal-free-case/ LINK PAGE REMOVED
10 European Union countries back stronger tax plans for Google, Amazon, Facebook.
This is because these disreputable companies use every trick in the book to avoid taxes and then blame the tax laws of the countries concerned.
EU authorities have increased pressure on Facebook, Twitter and Google to amend their user terms to bring them in line with EU law after proposals submitted by the tech giants were considered insufficient.
The EU courts will hear a case with a massive impact on Facebook and other American internet service companies. If courts continue to find U.S. protections for European Citizens data insufficient, it could result in U.S. internet service companies being unable to do business with Europe without setting up specialized servers there.
The EU Commission fined US social media giant Facebook 110 million euros for providing incorrect and misleading information on its takeover of WhatsApp.
July 2016: The BPI organisation in the UK have also experienced issues with google and its owned companies over online music piracy. Go here for their article:
https://www.bpi.co.uk/home/bpi-response-to-how-google-fights-piracy-2016-update.aspx
21 June 2013:
The UK ICO has served an enforcement notice on Google following a serious breach of the Data Protection Act relating to the collection of payload data by Google’s Street View cars in the UK.
In the UK google only paid £2 million in tax, despite extracting many billions from UK based advertisers. This is due to them using legal tax avoidance mechanisms. Such schemes indicate a company that has no social responsibility. At a time when low paid people are struggling to survive, google executives and their advisors are earning a fortune at the expense of ordinary tax payers.
Google have been fined $7 million (coffee money to google) by a US court over their collection of private data during their street photography projects.
The European Union has issues with them over the same piracy activities where private wifi data was collected.
In 2012 google were fined $22 million by the US Federal Trade Commission for ignoring the 'Do Not Track' option enabled by users of Safari web browser.
Other piracy activities
It seems you just cannot get away from the spying activities of google. I have noticed that most UK based official web sites such as Parliament .gov and local authorities, use google analytics on the pretext of “gaining usage data”. Even online banking services are doing the same. This is hogwash because all the site owners need to do is go to their site hosting company and look at the stats kept by their server.
As soon as you click on a site using google analytics and other google services you are being connected to google without noticing it. What is being sent to google, your guess is as good as mine, but if you do not delete the spyware called 'cookies' after each session, the chances are all your web use is being tracked by google.
There are a lot of Internet postings about the way google collect and store data. With gmail they claim only to auto scan emails for keywords that advertisers will need to target their ads. With facebook if you join up, but later decide to delete your account, they do not delete your data but retain it along with any personal information that you may have supplied to sign up. Doubtless the same with youtube and their other internet services.
Google claim to only pass on none identifiable information to third parties such as advertisers, but they collect data on everything you do on their linked services along with which other web sites you visit. Most cookies collect your IP address which can identify where you live. That is spying on a massive scale. I suggest you delete all cookies after every web session.
Conclusions:
This company seems to have grown too big for its boots. They now ride roughshod over every countries legislative systems designed to protect the individual from having private and business data stolen. They also use every tax avoidance system in the book and then say "it is up to Governments to change their tax systems". Dishonourable as well as pirates.
I now refuse to use google search engine. I refuse to use facebook. I refuse to have a gmail account. Gmail has become a spammers paradise, almost every spam email detected by my server has a gmail address. With these services there are plenty of others you can use. It costs very little to set up your own website where you can send emails direct to contacts without going via google's monitoring systems.
Here is an excellent article on how to get google out of your life: how-i-divorced-google:
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/259252/how-i-divorced-google LINK GONE
Other useful services
https://forget.me/ - this free tool helps people with Bing and Google removal requests (i.e. your name/address is somewhere on the web and you want to remove it from Google/Bing).
https://www.torproject.org - Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit.
https://thebestvpn.com – They have reviewed 30 service providers and rated them by logging policies, speed and encryption levels.
Use cookie clearing software of which there are several available, some are free.
In your web browser make sure you go to the 'view' settings and ensure you have the 'status bar' enabled. This sits at the bottom of the screen and lets you see what auto links are being used when you visit a web site. Also in 'settings' disable third party cookies. If a site insists you use them then avoid the site if possible.
If you have a wired modem keep an eye on the lights. If they keep flashing when you are not using your computer then that means data is being transmitted to/from your computer. It might just be an operating system update, but do check the originating URL.
Source and copyright: http://www.aromamedical.org
Google books project
In early 2013, I discovered that part of the 'Aromatherapy Practitioner Manual' by Sylla Sheppard-Hanger was available as a .pdf download from a UK website. I informed Sylla, who then contacted the site owner about this copyright infringement. The owner claimed he "got the copy via google books". This prompted me to search google books where I found my oldest version of 'Plant Aromatics' was also listed. Some years ago Sylla used to sell her manual and mine as a set, this made me suspect both have been copied from the same source. I then contacted google books and they replied that "their link was only meta data and that my manual had not been scanned". After several exchanges, they refused to remove the link despite me telling them that the manual was no longer sold and the version they listed was out of date.
Next I discovered google books had been involved in court cases in the USA over copyright infringement issues. Their system is to do financial deals with University libraries and then it seems scan everything in that library. They do not seem to bother checking if what they are scanning may be private publications intended for a specific audience, or even if they are collections of private papers donated to a library. Google seem to assume everything is there for the taking, some call that stealing! Google claim the law in the USA allows them to do this, yet many of the books and publications are written by authors in countries where US laws do not apply.
My concern is about the people around the world who produce instruction manuals for use exclusively in their own trades. These works can require great expenditure in time and money in order to create them. These costs are then recovered by small sales via fees to students, small business publications etc. Google by scanning such works and making them available via their systems are acting as pirates. They may also severely damage small businesses and/or the finances of individual authors.
Following the court cases against google, it would seem the big publishers will be able to get their hands into googles treasury. However, individual authors may not even know that their hard work has been pirated and thus not be able to claim remuneration. In either case it falls on google to declare how many files have been downloaded. Do you trust pirates? Not me!
Google as an International company have no worldwide rights to put extracts or whole publications online without obtaining permission. This is a classic example of where the UN or the International court should be the ones to pass judgements on issues of International importance, not judges in just one country. Google say they are only scanning “out of copyright' materials”, I do not believe that after my experience of them listing my work without asking.
April 2016: A US court has said that google are allowed to place online the extracts from out of print books. Note that they have already scanned hundreds of thousands of books without permission of the authors or their publishers. Who gave judges in the USA the right to issue judgements over International issues? Do these judges not understand that books are written and published in countries other than the USA? Continued:
Authors, check if your books are on google here:
http://books.google.com/books
Removal request form here:
http://support.google.com/books/bin/request.py?&product=books&contact_type=eb_dmca
Just some of the history and ongoing news on google services
2017: 1.6 million patient records going back 5 years that contained person identifiable information were given to the Google Deep Mind project by the Royal Free hospital, London. The Information Commissioner's Office reported that the hospital had breached privacy regulations but did nothing much about it. https://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/four-lessons-nhs-trusts-can-learn-from-the-royal-free-case/ LINK PAGE REMOVED
10 European Union countries back stronger tax plans for Google, Amazon, Facebook.
This is because these disreputable companies use every trick in the book to avoid taxes and then blame the tax laws of the countries concerned.
EU authorities have increased pressure on Facebook, Twitter and Google to amend their user terms to bring them in line with EU law after proposals submitted by the tech giants were considered insufficient.
The EU courts will hear a case with a massive impact on Facebook and other American internet service companies. If courts continue to find U.S. protections for European Citizens data insufficient, it could result in U.S. internet service companies being unable to do business with Europe without setting up specialized servers there.
The EU Commission fined US social media giant Facebook 110 million euros for providing incorrect and misleading information on its takeover of WhatsApp.
July 2016: The BPI organisation in the UK have also experienced issues with google and its owned companies over online music piracy. Go here for their article:
https://www.bpi.co.uk/home/bpi-response-to-how-google-fights-piracy-2016-update.aspx
21 June 2013:
The UK ICO has served an enforcement notice on Google following a serious breach of the Data Protection Act relating to the collection of payload data by Google’s Street View cars in the UK.
In the UK google only paid £2 million in tax, despite extracting many billions from UK based advertisers. This is due to them using legal tax avoidance mechanisms. Such schemes indicate a company that has no social responsibility. At a time when low paid people are struggling to survive, google executives and their advisors are earning a fortune at the expense of ordinary tax payers.
Google have been fined $7 million (coffee money to google) by a US court over their collection of private data during their street photography projects.
The European Union has issues with them over the same piracy activities where private wifi data was collected.
In 2012 google were fined $22 million by the US Federal Trade Commission for ignoring the 'Do Not Track' option enabled by users of Safari web browser.
In 2011 Google was accused of helping Canadian pharmacies to reach American consumers by letting the drug companies place advertisements through its AdWords programs and google agreed to forfeit millions of the revenue they raised.
Other piracy activities
It seems you just cannot get away from the spying activities of google. I have noticed that most UK based official web sites such as Parliament .gov and local authorities, use google analytics on the pretext of “gaining usage data”. Even online banking services are doing the same. This is hogwash because all the site owners need to do is go to their site hosting company and look at the stats kept by their server.
As soon as you click on a site using google analytics and other google services you are being connected to google without noticing it. What is being sent to google, your guess is as good as mine, but if you do not delete the spyware called 'cookies' after each session, the chances are all your web use is being tracked by google.
There are a lot of Internet postings about the way google collect and store data. With gmail they claim only to auto scan emails for keywords that advertisers will need to target their ads. With facebook if you join up, but later decide to delete your account, they do not delete your data but retain it along with any personal information that you may have supplied to sign up. Doubtless the same with youtube and their other internet services.
Google claim to only pass on none identifiable information to third parties such as advertisers, but they collect data on everything you do on their linked services along with which other web sites you visit. Most cookies collect your IP address which can identify where you live. That is spying on a massive scale. I suggest you delete all cookies after every web session.
Conclusions:
This company seems to have grown too big for its boots. They now ride roughshod over every countries legislative systems designed to protect the individual from having private and business data stolen. They also use every tax avoidance system in the book and then say "it is up to Governments to change their tax systems". Dishonourable as well as pirates.
I now refuse to use google search engine. I refuse to use facebook. I refuse to have a gmail account. Gmail has become a spammers paradise, almost every spam email detected by my server has a gmail address. With these services there are plenty of others you can use. It costs very little to set up your own website where you can send emails direct to contacts without going via google's monitoring systems.
Here is an excellent article on how to get google out of your life: how-i-divorced-google:
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/259252/how-i-divorced-google LINK GONE
Other useful services
https://forget.me/ - this free tool helps people with Bing and Google removal requests (i.e. your name/address is somewhere on the web and you want to remove it from Google/Bing).
https://www.torproject.org - Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit.
https://thebestvpn.com – They have reviewed 30 service providers and rated them by logging policies, speed and encryption levels.
Use cookie clearing software of which there are several available, some are free.
In your web browser make sure you go to the 'view' settings and ensure you have the 'status bar' enabled. This sits at the bottom of the screen and lets you see what auto links are being used when you visit a web site. Also in 'settings' disable third party cookies. If a site insists you use them then avoid the site if possible.
If you have a wired modem keep an eye on the lights. If they keep flashing when you are not using your computer then that means data is being transmitted to/from your computer. It might just be an operating system update, but do check the originating URL.
Source and copyright: http://www.aromamedical.org
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