Dear NewPipe community and other beloved creatures, You might have already noticed this: Searching “NewPipe” via Google will yield plenty information about the project, but a link to the official website is missing. This is because Google submitted to a DMCA takedown notice from a French record label, “Because Music”. The notice demands removing our homepage newpipe.net from their search listings along with a set of other domains completely unrelated to our project. The DMCA takedown notice was published in the Lumen database by Google themselves. While worse things could have happened as the result of such a takedown request, Google’s unlisting of our homepage creates a variety of problems. Given the fact that Google no longer counts visits to our site, it will lose relevance. As a result, websites for fake clones of NewPipe that mimic our homepage will tend to rank higher in the results. This could ultimately cause users to fall for such scams. The team is currently discussing what to do about the situation. We are considering taking legal action. If you are a lawyer and have experience with this and would like to help us, please contact us via email (team(at)newpipe.net). Regards, Schabi
  •  megane-kun   ( @megane_kun@lemm.ee ) English
    1•1 year ago

    While I echo the sentiment here (“Stop using Google!”), I am also concerned at the effects this may have on people that might have been helped by newpipe otherwise (and the chance that they go on their degoogle journey, spreading the word, or both).

    I am suspicious enough of Google to imagine them looking forward to boosting those malicious clones in whatever way they can (without opening themselves up to trouble), and that any attempts for getting them to act against those malicious clones will fall on deaf ears.

    I hope that there’s a way to resolve this that bypasses Google (and its so-called search engine).