Last year, Google was forced by various film and music production studios to delete around 345 million pirated links from its search engine
The "piracy" of legal material is not unknown in the film, music and other industries. Ever since the VHS standard appeared about forty years ago, as did all forms of computer software (programs, games) in the late 1970s, and even before that, music, which was copied onto cassettes from vinyl records (and later from CDs), illegal copies have been rampant.
As for movies, illegal copies of VHS tapes were found almost everywhere, as even the average user with two VHS video players connected together (via RGB SCART cable), could create an illegal copy of the legal tape. Moving on to the era of the “MP3” standard in 1996, with the use of CD recorders (which appeared in the early 90s), blank CD discs and, respectively, DVD films (mid 90s), DVD recorders as well as blank DVD discs, piracy became even easier and more accessible for the average user. Illegal copying was very easy, since all that was required was a CD/DVD recorder on the computer to make an illegal copy of a legal music CD/film to DVD. Somewhere here, we reach the era of high-speed aDSL lines and the massive appearance of pirated films on the Internet, easily accessible by everyone. As expected, piracy skyrocketed to incredible levels, and as the years passed until today, its levels continued to increase rapidly.
It is therefore not at all surprising that the largest search engine on the Internet, Google, was forced by various film and music production studios to delete about 345 million links from its search engine last year. These links referred to websites sharing illegal “rip” films and music CDs (a rip is the file resulting from the illegal transfer of a film or music CD from an optical disc CD / DVD / Blu-ray to a computer). In fact, as reported by the website torrentfreak.com, the number of links that Googleamounts to 345,169,134, that is, almost 1 million links per day for 2014! The “leader” in the request to delete links is the British Music Industry (BPI), with over 60 million reported links.
Google, despite being forced to remove the links, has taken a completely different stance as to the appropriate method of combating piracy. According to its statement, “piracy often increases when consumer demand is not met by legal supply.
As legal services like Netflix, iTunes and Spotify have proven, the best way to combat piracy is to offer better and more convenient legal services. "These services offer the purchase and/or rental of films/music via the Internet, either in the form of a file that is "downloaded" to a computer or mobile device in the case of purchase, or as a streaming viewing/listening in the case of rental. In fact, Google adds: "the right combination of price, convenience and abundance of content fights piracy much more than enforcing link deletions.".
The truth is, of course, that piracy is…piracy, that is, a practice that is completely illegal, both from the side of the one who has a legal product illegally copied, and from the side of the recipient. However, a large set of legal services that use the Internet to distribute music and films is not available in several countries (including Greece), in which the highest piracy rates are usually observed. Finally, no one can dispute the saying “the enemy of the good is the best”, as clearly as “the enemy of the cheap (or cheaper, we add), is the free one”, even if illegally…
Source: zougla.gr
