google's overly aggressive copyright enforcement

I'm not sure that this is purely a self publishing issue, so I'll move it to the Round Table. If the mods there feel it's out of place they're welcome to bounce it back and I'll see if I can work out where else it could go.

After reading the article, I don't see where Google is totally wrong on this.

By linking to Pirate Bay, the guy was linking to a known site that infringes on copyrighted material. It does not matter that the guy put his work up on Pirate Bay, or that he gives it away for free, its the site that he linked too.

And he is not the only one that has had their adsense revenue pulled by linking to Pirates Bay.

In this case, I support Google...

His Adsense account wasn't suspended for torrenting his own work. It was suspended for linking to Pirate Bay.

I'm big on privacy and I'm big on an author being allowed to promote his/her own work, even if they put it on a cesspool like pirate bay. Have been using a VPN to surf for years now. But, if Google is clear about their terms on this, then the guy can't really complain. Couldn't he simply point the ad to his homesite and then have that page redirected immediately? Or, point to a home site and have someone click a link to pirate bay? (Provided he has a direct link to the torrent site?)

Seems to be alternatives here.

I'm also siding with Google.

When this story is presented as "Google goes after poor author", obviously it sounds horrible. However, when you take into account exactly how many people try to abuse adsense via websites with illegal materials, such as pirating hacking blogs. So naturally they're going to have to implement some aggressive tactic to prevent being liable in such cases.

And while the author initially had trouble contacting Google about the issue, his ads have now been restored. So I suppose the bigger question is... why did he decide that the best way to get his novel out there was through the pirate bay?

M.M. Holy shit. Yes. Who the hell does mega searches on Pirate Bay for programming books? Maybe I'm missing something here.