Pirates hang for their crimes

Dawn C. Chmielewski has an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Google and Yahoo:

Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., two Internet companies that have long cultivated relationships in Hollywood, are nevertheless placing ads on sites that feature pirated movies, television shows, and music, a new report says.
University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab ranked Google and Yahoo among the top ten advertising networks that support major piracy sites around the world, based on the lab's analysis of online ads that receive the most copyright-infringement notices.
Google took issue with the findings, calling the researchers' conclusion "mistaken". Yahoo did not respond to requests seeking comment.
The report is the first installment of a monthly update that Innovation Lab director Jonathan Taplin hopes major brands will use in deciding where to advertise online.
"Whenever we talk to a brand about the fact that their ads are all over the pirate sites, they're like, 'Oh, how did that happen?'" Taplin said. "We thought it would be easier if they knew what ad networks were putting ads on pirate sites so they could avoid them."
The Innovation Lab used as its starting point Google's Transparency Report, which lists Internet sites that receive the most notices from studios, trade associations, and software and game publishers telling them to remove copyrighted works. Whenever an ad appears on one of these leading pirate sites, the lab uses software to obtain the name of the ad network.
The list of ad networks includes Openx, a Pasadena, California company that was backed by AOL Ventures and that describes itself as a leader in digital and mobile ad technology; Google and its advertising platform, DoubleClick; Yahoo and its ad exchange, Right Media; and Quantcast, a San Francisco firm that also places ads on sites owned by such major media companies as NBCUniversal and Viacom.
"To the extent [the study] suggests that Google ads are a major source of funds for major pirate sites, we believe it is mistaken," a Google spokesman said.

Rico says it's funny, but Google refused to post ads on his Rant because they said it had too much pirated (even though fully credited and attributed) stuff...