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by ejames 6036 days ago
OK, quick: Everyone who, upon installing a new piece of software, reads EVERY LAST SENTENCE of the terms of use and prints out the terms for future reference before hitting "install", raise your hand.

As a separate issue from the quality (or more precisely, lack thereof) of studiobriefing.net's content, I do think it's reasonable for studiobriefing.net to want to know what, exactly, they have done that is against the terms of service. Yes, you are in theory supposed to pay close attention to all of the terms of service, understand completely how your web site complies with said obligations, etc. But in practice, people don't always know what the problem is, or understand the legal and/or technical issues involved.

So even if Google is 100% justified in cutting off studiobriefing.net, I think that as a matter of courtesy, Google should be willing to state specifically what studiobriefing.net did to get cut off, i.e. the enumerated paragraph/sentence in the terms of service that governs the issue.

Of course, that is assuming that the studiobriefing.net account is an accurate report of the communications from Google.
2 comments
meatbag 6036 days ago
If the software is important to you, because, for example, your livelihood depends on it, then yes, I recommend reading the EULA closely :) IMO the same applies to running a business that is reliant to a significant degree on traffic from search engines. Failing to at least achieve basic familiarity with what Google does and doesn't like is equivalent to neglecting vital market research before undertaking any other business venture.
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KWD 6036 days ago
Well here's a place to start reading: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

This page on duplicate content might be appropriate: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...

In general, if your site does not present any original content then don't be surprised if it's delisted by any of the search engines. Also don't be surprised if the original source sends your ISP a take-down notice for copyright violations.

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