Anilrgowda

Google rules the direct marketing world thanks to AdSense, and AdSense is popular thanks to the fact that almost anyone can sign up. As it turns out, that's a problem when sites break the law.
A significant collection of media giants have accused Google of aiding two piracy web sites by both directing traffic to those sites and by selling advertising for them, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). The cadre of media powerhouses includes News Corp., Viacom, Sony, NBC Universal, Time Warner, and Disney, the majority of which are involved in legal actions against the operators of the sites in question.
Details of the imbroglio are indeed slim, and it would appear at this time that no legal action against Google is pending. The situation is an embarrassment for the company, however, and the media companies are looking for promises from Google that this won't happen again.
Legal filings show that Google worked with EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com from 2003 to 2005, generating more than $1.1 million in revenue for the sites through the AdSense program. The sites were generally oriented towards facilitating piracy, and site operators Brandon Drury and Luke Sample are now facing legal action for inducing others to infringe copyright. Both sites sold a repackaged BitTorrent client and access to a P2P search system, but the defendants argue that they are not guilty of the charges.
According to sworn statements from the two men, Google reportedly noticed the amount of traffic and advertising served by the two web sites and assigned them an account representative to help optimize their efforts. This has been construed by the media companies as a collusive act, but is it?
The WSJ fails to note that what the defendants did was something any AdSense or AdWords partner can do. The fact that the defendants were assigned an account manager is not particularly surprising: this happens to many "high traffic sites," Ars included, but does not necessarily mean that the content of a site is closely scrutinized. This may be why no legal action against Google has been announced; the real issue is client screening, and whether or not Google will now pay closer attention to the kinds of sites that allowed into its AdSense program. For its part, Google told the media companies that they would institute new screening processes immediately. Google also said that they would stop targeting keywords that are frequently used by pirates (such as "bootleg").