RIAA vs Google

After the lively discussion on Google’s piracy liabilities, today the company has to deal again with piracy and confront the almighty Recording Industry Association of America, too. This is about Google’s MP3 Music Download Pro app.

This application was designed by the company especially for Android and allows users to download music onto their smartphones. At the moment, the application is rated as the 5th most popular one on the entire Android Market. Of course, the anti-piracy outfit couldn’t like that. It has already sent a takedown notice to Google this past summer regarding this particular application, because it was clearly used for unauthorized purposes. In respond, Google claimed that it refused to remove the app from the Android Market. Still, the RIAA has some concerns with the company’s screening and takedown procedures. Entertainment industry still hopes that they’ll be improved.

In addition, Google is going to fulfill its promise to launch a new music store, and it has already invited media representatives to the big launch. Online reports reveal that the company has managed to close deals with 4 largest record labels, and if it is really so, Apple’s iTunes may get a rival. Nevertheless, the reports don’t mention what strategy Google has developed to lure users to purchase licensed music from their store.

According to some media reports, Google refused to take down the application because it believes that the app can also be used for legitimate purposes – for example, recently the screenshots were posted, showing how the app could be used to search for classical music. For some reason, they soon magically disappeared.

A couple months ago, Google claimed it has made significant progress on piracy liabilities by deleting illegal content from both its Autocomplete function and search results. Moreover, the company has already taken down a number of mobile applications facilitating copyright violation. The problem is that the takedown times are usually long, and the industry often sees the same or similar applications from the same developers re-appearing fast enough. In addition, the company is also accused of failing to screen and evaluate applications before uploading them.

At the moment, RIAA’s representative refused to comment whether the entertainment industry will launch a lawsuit against Google.

The first reports of the incidents came in November 2010: one of the Apple support forum’s users claimed that someone had spent over $50 of his iTunes Store credit on iPhone apps, while his home address changed to some address in Towson, Maryland.

Later, the list of complaints grew as much as up to 700 posts, when a hacker or a number of them managed to spend iTunes gift card credit without permission. Apple had to refund some of its users, but not all of them – the company hasn’t given cash back to many, while acknowledging no wrongdoing or iTunes hacking.

The Apple religion claimed that Jobs’ Mob was the most secure software maker throughout the globe and only Windows-running devices could be hacked. Since Apple didn’t stop the hackers, they grew more sophisticated, with the users noticing that the purchases in question turned out to be applications from certain developers, including “gao jing,” known for application like Expert Guide for Black Ops or Game Guide for New Vegas.

The experts believed that the software purchased was all of Chinese origin, thus hinting that there was a way for rogue developers to get some cash off Apple. The latter appeared to have twigged that there might be something afoot and none of the applications were in the store.

Back in April, a number of users discovered that instead their money were making in-app purchases for a Sega game titled KingdomConquest, and it was clear to everyone that Sega was unlikely to make sales in such dodgy way. The intruders managed to “purchase” the free application on victims’ iTunes accounts, thus triggering the in-app purchases. Although Sega expressed a wish to investigate, it appeared that it was blocked by Apple, which refused to allow access to its users’ iTunes account data or any transaction histories.

Back this past June, the attacks started worsening, with Jobs’ Mob emails to users coming close to admitting that cash was taken from customer accounts without permission. Still, the company only refunded cash once, while customers hit during the second attack were told to go forth and multiply. Meanwhile, the hacks are getting more frequent.

Areas where Yahoo excels over Google according to CMS Watch include:

Better access control options and simpler approach to multi-site analytics
Larger default monthly page-view limits (200MM vs. 5MM – unless you have an active AdWords campaign)
Access to traffic data: Both vendors retain the right to hold and use your web analytics data for their own purposes, but only Yahoo! gives you the ability to export out your raw, unaggregated data
Longer historical availability of raw data
Besides, despite the better analytics platform, Yahoo! still lacks features that could make it a perfect fit for all enterprise level needs:

“Ultimately, for some enterprises, neither Google nor Yahoo! make a good fit,” explained Tony Byrne CMS Watch founder, “and those buyers should consider fee-based web analytics solutions.”

What are high authority websites?

High authority websites are website that are trusted by Google. In general, high authority websites meet two or more of the following criteria:

•they are old and established websites that are several years old
•the websites did not contain spam in the past
•they have many backlinks from other sites
•they belong to the most important sites for a particular topic

Step 1: find high authority sites

Although the PageRank that Google displays in its toolbar is discussed controversially, it is still a good indicator to find authority websites (if the PageRank is 7 or higher).

When you’ve found a high authority site, you should try to get a backlink from that site. Contact the webmasters or public contacts of the authority sites.

If you have a good website with quality content, chances are that the high authority sites will link to your site.

What do you do if the authority sites don’t want to link to your site?

Sometimes, an authority site links to many other websites but for some reason, the webmaster doesn’t want to link to your site or you just never hear back from your attempts to become a link on their site.

In that case, you can still benefit from the link power of that site by contacting the webmasters of the sites that are linked by the high authority site. For example;

High authority site “A” links to website “B” then website “B” links to your website. These links are called second-tier links. Of course, they don’t have the same effect as a direct link from a high authority site. However, they are still very valuable and it is likely that these links are more valuable than many other links that you can get from smaller or lower tier sites.

TechnicalRx impelments this concept on our SEO / SEM services. Feel free to contact us for details or to begin your own journey into online presence!

http://www.technicalrx.com

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