The agreement between search engines and the British government was formalized after years of meetings that always reached an impasse. Google just and Microsoft two of the companies that have agreed to act more effectively against piracy.
Recent reports have revealed that search engines have agreed to develop a code that will block people from accessing torrent sites and streaming sites. It was also revealed that if companies do not choose to adopt the code, they will be forced to comply with legislation that essentially gives them no choice.
Jo Johnson, the minister for universities, science, research and innovation, argues that the relationship between search engines and the creative industries must be collaborative. It is important to present consumers with links to legitimate websites and services that are not associated with pirate sites.
What is going to happen now?
Websites that infringe copyright will be demoted from the first page of searches. In addition, the search autocomplete feature will stop showing terms that lead to pirated websites.
Compliance with the new code will be monitored by the Intellectual Property Office for the next few months.
While this code is a good addition to combatting piracy, it will not have much of an impact as, as Google has repeatedly stated, pirated websites do not receive much traffic through search engines.
Google, like Bing, has been demoting pirated websites in its search engine for several years.
