A 21-year-old American has posted a video on YouTube explaining how to use Google’s search engine to download music and video games for free, Les Echos, sister paper of the Financial Times, has found.
The simple search formula uses Google’s powerful algorithms to track down music or other files on unprotected computer systems, including US university systems. “A lot of students use the web-space given to them by their university to share music with their friends,” said Jimmy Ruska.
Mr Ruska, who posted the video “to educate internet users”, said music files could be downloaded this way far more quickly than from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, which are illegal in many countries because they contravene the copyright of artists and recording companies.
The posting is potentially embarrassing for Google, which owns the YouTube video-sharing website. The world’s leading search engine has long since disabled functions that were previously used to search for MP3 music files. However, Mr Ruska’s search method not only finds MP3 format recordings but also the MP4 format predominantly used by the iTunes music player developed by US technology group Apple.
Matt Cutts, the engineer in charge of the quality of search results at Google, played down the effectiveness of the system. “The formula shown on YouTube is an attempt to find web pages containing a list of files including the word MP3,” he said.
“Nothing guarantees that such a search will find music files, for many web pages can contain the word MP3 without giving access to [music] content.”
But the YouTube video has been viewed by more than 430,000 internet users since it was posted in April and many have saved the address to their “favourites” file.
Searches by Les Echos located many web pages containing music files that could be downloaded very quickly. It was also possible to access recordings of television programmes, films and video games.
The same search formula worked on some other search engines, including Yahoo! and Exalead, although with fewer results. “Google explores many more internet sites than Yahoo! or MSN [the search portal of US software manufacturer Microsoft] ever will,” said Mr Ruska.
To make locating and downloading music files even easier, Mr Ruska offers on his own website a search engine programmed with the formula that works on Google. The web user has only to type in the name of a song or an artist to see a list of available recordings.
The London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry identified this use of search engines to make illegal file downloads early last year.
“We systematically send many warning letters and we do not hesitate to take legal action when necessary,” the Federation said. “But we do not comment in advance on action that we will or will not take.”
Last week a Belgian court made Europe’s first ruling that an internet service provider must block illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing by its subscribers when copyright is breached, according to the IFPI. Other European countries are expected to pass laws that will make ISPs responsible for stamping out exchanges of copyright material.
Google’s share price rose 5.09 per cent to $544.49 by midday on Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment