[tptacek]

"As a percentage of site's URLs" is a disingenuous statistic. Google has a notion of which URLs on a site are germane; for instance, how likely they are to come up in searches. Reported URLs on TORRENTZ.EU as a percentage of germane URLs will probably tell a different tale than "<0.1%".

Put differently: you'd have to be made of stupid to have a ratio of infringing URLs to overall URLs that looked unfavorable; all you have to do to minimize that metric is to spray crap all over some portion of your site that nobody but Googlebot cares about.

[Natsu]

I think I misunderstood you, because it sounds like you're implying that these sites have "spray[ed] crap" all over their sites to look better in this newly released report?

You may know more than I do about the existence of pages of crap on torrentz.eu because I have never been there, but it's rather difficult for me to believe that anyone is intentionally gaming a report they had no way of knowing the existence of until Google's announcement.

[tptacek]

http://torrentz.eu/i

You have to dig not to find copyright-infringing links at the root of TORRENTZ.EU's index.

At yet the statistic on Google's summary page suggests that TORRENTZ.EU is primarily --- no, overwhelmingly --- a non-infringing site. And that is the reason the statistic is there: to put forward that argument.

We don't have to agree on the policy debate here, but let's at least call spades spades.

[Natsu]

I never said there wasn't infringing content there. I had never been there, after all, though I just took a quick peek after you linked to it just now. Nothing loaded. That's probably due to noscript, which I wouldn't dare turn off on a site like that.

I still think it unlikely that anyone is gaming that metric. It might be a bad one for whatever reason, but I can't imagine that anyone has been gaming it given that nobody knew of it until just now.

[tptacek]

A metric that says the overwhelming majority of TORRENTZ.EU is noninfringing is a bogus metric. My point is, I think, pretty clear. We can debate whether infringement is worth caring about, but no reasonable debate suggests that TORRENTZ.EU is mostly rightsholder-neutral.

[Natsu]

I've never argued for it being a good metric, only against it being intentionally gamed by any of the sites.

[eeeeee]

http:// torrentz.eu/675ebffc3f6a94c8571b2a2f4e2fb19d93a863