Google funded poll reveals U.S. public supports web blocking

[Leeky]

Google has been vocal about their feelings surrounding the proposed new bill that could see ISP's blocking access to websites accused of copyright or trademark infringement. However, in a rather ironic turn of events, a Google funded survey by Columbia University has revealed that more than half of those taking part actually want websites guilty of serial copyright infringement blocked.

Of the 2,303 adults that took part in the survey, "no fewer than 58 percent support the idea of ISPs blocking the pirate sites, and 36 percent disagree with this. Of the respondents, 61 percent want sites like Facebook to take more action to screen for infringing material," according to the Register.

The Register also commented that the less than favorable response resulted in the University rephrasing the question. When asked if websites should be "censored", 46 percent said yes, and 49 percent said no. Fewer agreed if the question was posed in a way that implied legal content was being accidentally blocked. And asked if "the government" should "censor" websites, the number fell still further, with 36 percent in favor and 64 per cent disagreeing.

The research omits several crucial factors though. U.K. research found 51-percent of those asked the question, "should serial copyright leechers be punished more strongly," believed they should be. The Columbia research did not ask this question. The same U.K. survey found only 11-percent disagreed with the statement "it is important to protect the creative industries from piracy."

That's without the rather obvious issue that this research was paid for by the one company that leads the fight against the proposed new bill. Blocking piracy sites will hurt Google, in much the same way as removing other legal content will. It is in the interest of the search giant to ensure by whatever means are at their disposal that the internet remains as unregulated as possible.

U.S. people surveyed were asked "what is an appropriate penalty for downloading an unauthorized song or movie." Not surprisingly, most were against the penalities suggested.

Google, among other corporations, believe the two bills written in their current form would expose legitimate businesses and individuals to a broad and almost open ended risk of liability, likely resulting in more lawsuits. They also feel that, if passed and they become law, they could be perverted in the future and pose a real threat in censoring the internet.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/46318-google-funded-poll-reveals-us-public-supports-web-blocking.html

 

[yRaz]

People(majority of the US population) don't understand the internet or technology enough to see the implications of this getting passed.

 

[Darkshadoe]

yRaz said:
People(majority of the US population) don't understand the internet or technology enough to see the implications of this getting passed.

Exactly! Just wait till they close down Facebook and watch people get irate.

 

[Greg S]

Freedom of the press is limited if they censor the internet. People can publish whatever they want as long as it doesn't put the US in danger. A pirated copy of a movie doesn't put the US in any danger.

 

[treetops]

Meh they only surveyed 2k people I stopped reading after that.

 

[Guest]

Wow you're sound so smart... but guess what? Go learn statistics and understand how it works before you make such an ignorant comment.

 

[Guest]

"Wow you're sound so smart... "
Oops. I meant "you sound so smart" and not that big glaring error.

 

[Wendig0]

Guest said:
Wow you're sound so smart...

So much fail.

edit

"Wow you're sound so smart... "
Oops. I meant "you sound so smart" and not that big glaring error.

At least you caught yourself.

 

[DokkRokken]

treetops said:
Meh they only surveyed 2k people I stopped reading after that.

Why? When surveying a large population, 2000 is about the optimal amount. It should render a result that's representative of the population, and will have an acceptable margin of error ~3%

If they surveyed more people, they'd run into diminishing returns. 4000 people would give a result that's ~2% margin of error, which is pointless.

The only real caveat with a phone poll is where people are more uncomfortable giving answers to a person that may reflect negatively on themselves. But the numbers appear in line with what we'd expect in terms of age.

If the questions were 'leading questions' or structured in a way that would colour the respondent's answers to respond in a certain fashion... that could make a difference too. But then that would be a bit strange since it was funded by Google.

So really, I'm not sure what the problem is. You probably just don't like the results. But that's not the fault of numbers and pure data.

 

[TJGeezer]

The headline blares support for the blacklist bill, but the respiondents flipped when the question was rephrased to make the consequences clear. That tells me the original question misled the respondents. It's like deregulation of gambling bankers and mortgage sharpies - people opposed it after they figured out what was being done to them.

A better headline might have read something like "Google funded poll reveals U.S. public opposes black list bill if consequences are made clear." Or a total no-surprise "Google funded poll reveals U.S. public misunderstands black list bill."

When did the broad U.S. majority ever get it before it was too late?

 

[NTAPRO]

I would think that it may be the older part of the public that majorly supports it.

 

[captaincranky]

"Wow you're sound so smart... "
Oops. I meant "you sound so smart" and not that big glaring error.

Yes, yes, I see your problem. It's very difficult to talk down to someone with a lack of functional literacy at your disposal.

When did the broad U.S. majority ever get it before it was too late?

You'd have to go all the way back to the hula hoop for that.

Who was in the poll demographic any way, 2000 members of the RIAA and MPAA, their heirs and issue per stirpes?

 

[Guest]

"Yes, yes, I see your problem. It's very difficult to talk down to someone with a lack of functional literacy at your disposal."

Yes, yes, very true. Sometimes I rush and don't do a quick check of what I wrote before I hit the "Submit" button. Everyone is human and therefore mistakes are actually common. Don't you agree? At the very least I saw the errors of my way and fixed my glaring grammar error as soon as possible. Right captaincranky? Perhaps what if English is not my primary language? Am I still stupid and uneducated even though the main idea of the post is to point out the concept error of treetop? I do agree that I was harsh towards him and therefore it was look like I was looking down on him but in fact, it was all due to me being a hothead and therefore I am sorry for my tone.

 

[Guest]

captaincranky,

Ah yes. One more thing. I am glad that you're someone who always check the content of their post before clicking the submit button. I should definitely learn that from you so that in the future I won't make more of those very bad mistakes which will affect the point I am trying to make in those post. Also it just makes the post look better.

 

[captaincranky]

"Yes, yes, I see your problem. It's very difficult to talk down to someone with a lack of functional literacy at your disposal."

Yes, yes, very true. Sometimes I rush and don't do a quick check of what I wrote before I hit the "Submit" button. Everyone is human and therefore mistakes are actually common. Don't you agree? At the very least I saw the errors of my way and fixed my glaring grammar error as soon as possible. Right captaincranky? Perhaps what if English is not my primary language? Am I still stupid and uneducated even though the main idea of the post is to point out the concept error of treetop? I do agree that I was harsh towards him and therefore it was look like I was looking down on him but in fact, it was all due to me being a hothead and therefore I am sorry for my tone.

Well, I don't think the guest post function has the edit button. That said, a post becomes similar to the old carpenter's adage, "measure twice, cut once". In paraphrase, " proofread twice, submit once". I'm normally still proofing my material even after it's up.

As far as treetops opinion goes, I'm inclined to come down on his side. While perhaps it is true to a certain degree, you can get a valid poll with just 2K of sampling. It is probably "truer", that it's too easy to slew any result by biasing the demographic base. Hence, in the same way you can change the answers by how you ask the question, you can change the answers, perhaps even more rapidly, by changing who you ask.

I don't like, trust, or believe in Google. I don't want their f***ing browser, or them following me around the web.

If Google has drawn any conclusions about site blocking, it is to the sole benefit of Google, not any of the rest of us.

I have a strong suspicion that during the questioning process, the Google probably interjected porn site blocking into the mix. Of course most parents will come down strongly in favor of porn site blocking, but probably are not as informed about copyright issues.

If you want answers in favor of blocking sites involved with copyright violations, all you have to do is ask 2000 people in zip code 90210. If you ask Wall Street Bankers who can afford to buy a couple dozen Blu-Ray discs each week, I'm pretty sure they'd answer, "block all the damned download sites you want". They steal too, but in a different way. In any event, the answers can be made to lie, but you're compounding the fallacy by swearing to it.

 

[Guest]

@ captaincranky

"measure twice, cut once". That's a nice one! I should keep that in mind.

Hmm... your argument is a very good one. Until we can get full details of their methodology, we cannot be sure the sampling is random and consistent enough. Considering this is Google, they might have introduced "quirks" into their methodology that would skew for an advantageous result. Although to be honest, I'm thinking they would never do such a thing because if such a thing comes into light, it would hurt them. However we might never really know. So until the methodology is released and scrutinized, we can only take the result with a grain of salt.

 

[captaincranky]

@ captaincranky
...[ ]... we can only take the result with a grain of salt.

Here the term "result", becomes a euphemism for "propaganda", pure and simple. It's a foregone conclusion.

Google is about to have site blocking forced on them. They're covering their own a**es by saying the people want it. This issue is a rare example of s*** rolling uphill. The ISPs are in the process of having site blocking forced on them, and Google intends to come out smelling like a rose whatever eventually transpires.

I would argue that the media companies can dangle ad revenue in front of Google, as a reward for getting copyright infringing sites off the web. And hey, this survey says it's by popular demand.....spare me...!

As to Google getting caught slewing the results, they've reached a level of hubris, arrogance, and public dependence, all they'd have to say is "whoops, sorry 'bout that", and it would blow over in a day, two at the outside..

 

[Archean]

yRaz said:
People(majority of the US population) don't understand the internet or technology enough to see the implications of this getting passed.

+1, and it is true for many other things as well.

 

[Guest]

This poll is garbage, it hits the topics in a generic way to get its outcome. Lets put the bill in normal human terms and see if they support it...

This is crap.

 

[Guest]

piracy is a tool lots of companies use.

if piracy is controlled at this level, say good buy to rapid innovation in software.

just more fancy proxy server's to innovate better methods of piracy!

THIS IS JUST MY OPINION!

 

[Zecias]

DokkRokken said:

treetops said:
Meh they only surveyed 2k people I stopped reading after that.

Why? When surveying a large population, 2000 is about the optimal amount. It should render a result that's representative of the population, and will have an acceptable margin of error ~3%

If they surveyed more people, they'd run into diminishing returns. 4000 people would give a result that's ~2% margin of error, which is pointless.

The only real caveat with a phone poll is where people are more uncomfortable giving answers to a person that may reflect negatively on themselves. But the numbers appear in line with what we'd expect in terms of age.

If the questions were 'leading questions' or structured in a way that would colour the respondent's answers to respond in a certain fashion... that could make a difference too. But then that would be a bit strange since it was funded by Google.

So really, I'm not sure what the problem is. You probably just don't like the results. But that's not the fault of numbers and pure data.

Yes, the sample size is large enough, but there are not enough specifics as to how they designed the study. In the end you can't trust it anyways.

 

[AnonymousSurfer]

Why would someone want to pass a restriction on the internet? To restrict a virtual place and what we can say on this virtual place? They definitely need to think over the idea, and I for one am not for it.

 

[Guest]

This poll is created by design, browsing over the google results I have noticed that the MPAA is indeed investing in its own propaganda machine into sites such as readwriteweb to circumvent people into believing that SOPA is a good thing, and not reminiscent of communist Chinese censorship - which it is. All that has to be known is, that SOPA in its current form will completely destroy everything the internet stands for. Sites like Facebook, myspace, could be taken down. A Betanews poll found that 95% opposed SOPA, that's why this poll I believe is most likely based on a fixed demographic. I guess the 1 million emails sent to congress and 87,000 phone calls can't hold a match to this poll right. I'm sure that doesn't prove how many people think that this idea is ridiculously bad. If you buy the magic beans they're selling you with this fake poll you're an *****. lmao.