This week Google announced it had renewed it’s agreement to operate in China. Apparently it also has no problem placing its ads on youku.com, the Chinese version of Youtube despite the fact that much of the content on youku.com is pirated. Unlike Youtube, youku doesn’t seem to offer content creators any easy way to remove infringing content.
When I sent a DMCA notice to youku.com the result was merely that the video was blocked here in the U.S. I imagine it continues to play with no difficulty for those in China and elsewhere who wish to view it.
Some streams of our film are still available for U.S. viewers and the Google ads appear clearly on those as well. I’ve sent a DMCA notice to AdSense about these. We shall see if anything happens. UPDATE July 22: Well, the DMCA notice to Google’s AdSense has led to an interesting an confounding series of emails from Google. I will be adding an entire new page on this shortly. Stay tuned.
A myriad of LOLA versions available via AdSense Client in China.
Our film streaming alongside a series of Google sponsored advertising
Video was blocked for U.S. viewers, but still online. Google ads appear below.
continuation of the page above with Google ads
The source code for the page: google_ad_client = "pub-7278399111614699
LOLA streaming on youku page featuring google ads from same account as above
Google ads below the streamed movie
And source code from the page, see Google highlighted in green. Same AdSense account for both.