For nearly a decade, I've operated a variety of sites related to legal live music sharing. They're on free hosts, and it's not really feasible for me to change hosts or transfer to paid hosting services (mostly because of the extensive linking by others, which I encourage). In the recent past, most of the advertising on the sites has been placed by Google Adwords. Google is selling advertising space to commercial music bootleggers/pirates, and refuses to terminate the advertising -- even though promoting such criminal enterprises is itself actionable, provides the tiniest amount of revenue to Google, and contradicts Google's "Don't be evil" philosophy. Because the advertising is placed directly with my hosts, I have no control or approval over it. When I contacted Google about the problem, I received a condescending, even insulting email from Atty. Hilary E. Ware, who refused to do anything, told me that Google had no reason to believe that musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones had not licensed their concerts to a nameless business operating out of a mail drop in Montreal, and implying that taking any action except in response to a DMCA complaint from Dylan, Springsteen, or the Stones themselves would be out of compliance with the law. Ware has refused to respond to my followups for six months. Having advertising garbage like that forced on my site damages my reputation and lends my credibility (which is significant, despite the silly screen name) to thieves and criminals. What can I do to get Google to stop turning my sites into billboards for criminals?
I can't do that -- because I use advertiser-supported free hosting, and after nearly ten years can't relocate all my sites without inconveniencing many, many users who link to pages on the sites, devote a ridiculous amount of time to rewriting and converting html code, and probably taking a large financial hit, since Google's ads appear on virtually all the suitable hosts. As I said, I have no control or approval over the advertising appearing on my sites. And why should I have to do this, since the advertising violates Google's own TOS and the businesses involved are undeniably criminal?
I don't want to know your domain name, but what host are you using? Is it a subdomain? If there is potential for a "large financial hit", I would suggest that you pony up some cash and get your own hosting and your own domain name now - the sooner the better - Google is only going to get WORSE.
I would bet Google's policy is to not police the advertisers. Doing that would take a huge amount manpower on their part, not to mention a detailed knowledge of the law in the different countries where their advertisers do business. While it may not be probable that those sites have licensed music, it is certainly theoretically possible, and it shouldn't be Google's job to investigate. That being said, the copyright holders of that music can certainly file a DMCA complaint to both the Google search engine and to Adsense - I have heard that Google is very responsive on that front. Your best bet may be to alert the RIAA et al. to those sites while putting them in your competitive ad filter.
It seems he does not control the account - he is using a free host who places AdSense on their sites. I think his best option is to get his own hosting.
Can't do that without inconveniencing a huge number of linking users, or I'd have done it by now. And it hardly seems appropriate for the people who claim their credo is "You can make money without doing evil" to make a chickens--t amount of money by doing evil and harming not just me but thousands of other music fans. If Google keeps turning fan sites into billboards for music pirates and bootleggers, we're going to see much more aggressive action from artists' representatives to close those sites down -- with good reason.
put a redirect from the old domain, move to a paid hosting, email all of your linkers and tell them to change the links, use URL filtering and then keep the adsense money in your own pocket. Its a BIG job yes, but use some weeks and you will be happy ever after.
Thanks chowbow - you said it much more clearly than I did. Free hosts are a ticking time bomb: How long will they stay in business? Will they delete your site because of some random flux in the interweb?
Lycos is the largest free host, and I have a very good, longstanding (going on ten years) working relationship with them -- particularly when it comes to DNS attacks from commercial bootleggers, which happen regularly. I'd have to create redirects on at least 7000 pages and notify more than 1000 linkers. And if I were to accept advertising myself on the sites, I'd eventually run into trouble with the musicians involved, who tolerate fan sites' use of graphics, trademarks, etc so long as the fansite operators don't try to monetize the sites.