A new report from the University of Southern California (USC) has accused web giants Google and Yahoo of financially aiding web piracy, by providing ad revenue to known web piracy hangouts through each's advertising networks.
The university's Annenberg Innovation Lab studied known piracy websites and collected information regarding which ad networks they used, and they found that Google was the second most popular ad network. Yahoo was further back, in 6th. Ironically, the list of piracy websites was compiled using Google's own data, released publicly as part of recent transparency efforts.
The most popular ad network was OpenX, an open source ad publishing platform, as well as an ad exchange marketplace.
Both Google and Yahoo has criticized the report's conclusions.
"The complexity of online advertising has led some to conclude incorrectly that the mere presence of any Google code on a site means financial support from Google," A Google spokeperson told CNET, while Yahoo re-iterated their comprehensive publisher policies in regards to copyright infringement.
But the USC, who has strong ties to Hollywood, vows to continue issuing an update to this report every month to continue to name and shame those they believe are profiting from the web piracy problem.
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