Disney's latest trick, or what Dire Straits got right

Disney's latest trick is a search engines based on 'authority' rather than popularity. And all this tells us is that Dire Straits 'Latest Trick' was apparently referring to Disney.


Some days ago, 28^th of October to be precise, Disney was given a patent on a specific type of search engine. The idea is quite simple: for too long search engines have struggled with filtering copyrighted content out of the showed results. Google has adjusted its algorithms again and again over the years, but they seems to keep on getting it wrong somehow. That's what Disney thinks apparently. They claim that search engines wrongly focus on popularity of websites in ranking the results, and they may have a point there. Too often looking for anything online will result in a Wikipedia page to rise up, even if you have absolutely no interest in what Wikipedia has to say about it. Certainly this is oversimplified of the complexity of the algorithms; if it were that simple, Google would have opened its algorithm for public a long time ago, despite numerous requests to do so.

So instead of focusing on popularity, as current search engines allegedly do, Disney's approach is to ignore popularity all-together, and focus on "authenticity". That's a very nice way to say that Disney wants to rank first on Google and other search engines' results when people are searching for something related to Disney. Don't take my word for it:

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"The Disney.go.com web page may be associated with an authenticity weight that is greater than the authenticity weight associated with the encyclopedia web page because Disney.go.com is the official domain for The Walt Disney Company. As such, with respect to the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs™ film, the Disney.go.com web page may be considered more authoritative (and thus more authentic) than the encyclopedia web page."

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That's right, if Disney gets its way, searching for something like 'original Snow White by brothers Grimm' will result in having Disney on top. In itself, this is already highly problematic, but it gets worse. Imagine you are looking to watch a new Disney (or any other) film, and you decide to see online whether its worth it. Instead of being directed to IMDb.com (or any other website with negative reviews), you only find those that Disney would say are 'authoritative'.
There is something quite interesting about this whole situation with Disney. While reading the news about this, coming across comments such as "Isn't this going back to CISPA/PIPA/ACTA (and the coming of TTIP and TTP)?" and "Which search engine in their right mind would agree to use this patent?", it suddenly hit me. Dire Straits had it right all along. We have all misunderstood that what Mark Knopfler was referring to, are not the West End of London, but Disney. Here are the lyrics, and you tell me whether this simply does not apply to what Disney is doing in order to protect its 'true love' crap. And yes, I know that I give too much credit to Disney by associating them with Dire Straits.

Dire Straits - Latest Trick lyrics

All the late night bargains have been struck
Between the satin beaus and their belles
And prehistoric garbage trucks
Have the city to themselves
Echoes and roars dinosaurs
They're all doing the monster mash
And most of the taxis, most of the whores
Are only taking calls for cash

I don't know how it happened
It all took place so quick
But all I can do is hand it to you
And your latest trick

Well now my door was standing open
Security was laid back and lax
But it was only my heart got broken
You must have had a pass key made out of wax
You played robbery with insolence
And I played the blues in twelve bars down Lover's Lane
And you never did have the inteligence to use
The twelve keys hanging off my chain

I don't know how it happened
It all took place so quick
But all I can do is hand it to you
And your latest trick

Now it's past last call for alcohol
Past recall has been here and gone
The landlord, he finally paid us all
The satin jazzmen have put away their horns
And we're standing outside of this wonderland
Looking so bereaved and so bereft
Like a Bowery bum when he finally understands
The bottle's empty and there's nothing left

I don't know how it happened
It was faster than the eye could flick
But not all I can do is hand it to you
And your latest trick

This doesn't need much interpretation to refer to where Disney is today: a prehistoric garbage truck that acts like a whore who own the city. An entity that tries to break into our pockets, which it doesn't realize are already empty. I will expand on this later if it actually is not clear.