Google And Microsoft Agree To Help Combat Illegal Downloads

Taking steps to make it harder to find illegal content sharers.

Pirated material may no longer find its place on the first pages of two leading search engines Google and Bing (from Microsoft), at least in Britain.

The two search engine giants have accepted a new Code Of Conduct proposed by Britain’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) that has been created to demote websites that stream or host pirated material.

After this the users, sure might have a hard time looking for disreputable content providers.

If statistics by Britain’s IPO are taken in consideration, around one in six internet users have access to pirated content, though the numbers are on a decline due to rise of legal streaming services.

The agreement comes after a long-drawn journey of campaigning by record labels and film studios who have constantly cited Google and Microsoft of ignoring (and perhaps festering) piracy deliberately and not intervening in the form of measures to protect copyright online.

However, Google is of the view that search engines don’t divert traffic to piracy websites.
A spokesman said: “Google has been an active partner for many years in the fight against piracy online. We remain committed to tackling this issue and look forward to further partnership with rights holders.”

The Code Of Conduct, the first of its kind in the U.K., will drive change in search result rankings such that when users try searching for content like digital books, music videos and cricket coverage, they will in all probability be directed to legit providers and not pirate sites.

It is however, important to realise that such changes will happen gradually, page rankings and their algorithms are seriously big complex, and making changes to these core logics is never taken lightly. So, while the search giants will begin their arduous tasks soon, changes are officially expected to be rolled out this summer.

Eddy Leviten, Director General at the Alliance for Intellectual Property, in this regard said, “Sometimes people will search for something and they will end up unwittingly being taken to a pirated piece of content…What we want to ensure is that the results at the top of the search engines are the genuine ones.”

It will be way too far-fetched to assume that the implementation of this code would mean complete extinction of pirating websites from search engines like Google and Bing, but what it would definitely do is that it will downgrade such portals from being visible in the search results and advance authentic distributors up in the list instead.
The Code thereby ensures that most of the traffic lands up on genuine websites and not on the illegal ones.

So how does one categorise this illegal piracy promoting websites?

Simply put, all the websites that have been served with copyright infringement notices will be in a way down-listed on the common searches on Google and Microsoft. Search engine autocomplete function would also adopt this Code, thereby removing terms or keywords that may lead to pirate websites instead of legitimate services that pay fees to copyright holders.

While the adoption of such a Code on Google and Bing is voluntary, there is a supervising body that will monitor Google and Bing’s response over the coming few months and then based on that apply stricter measures as and when required in the future.

The news has managed to garner positive reactions from a lot of influential people and publications.

Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive of BPI, which represents record labels, said the code would not be a silver bullet for copyright holders.
“We have long campaigned for search engines to do more to ensure fans are directed to legal sources for music or other entertainment. There is much work still to do to achieve this. The Code will not be a silver bullet fix, but it will mean that illegal sites are demoted more quickly from search results and that fans searching for music are more likely to find a fair site.”

Stan McCoy, of the Motion Picture Association in Europe, said “Pirate websites are currently much too easy to find via search, so we appreciate the parties’ willingness to try to improve that situation”.
“We look forward to working on this initiative alongside many other approaches to fighting online piracy, such as the Get it Right campaign that aims to help educate consumers about the many ways to enjoy film and television content legally and at the time of their choosing.”

It would be interesting to see how this code pans out in the UK and as to whether it will roll out in other countries as well or not.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.