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Google Changes 'To Fight Piracy' By Highlighting Legal Sites

Posted by timothy on from the sponsored-links-you-might-also-enjoy dept.

mrspoonsi writes Google has announced changes to its search engine in an attempt to curb online piracy. The company has long been criticised for enabling people to find sites to download entertainment illegally. The entertainment industry has argued that illegal sites should be "demoted" in search results. The new measures, mostly welcomed by music trade group the BPI, will instead point users towards legal alternatives such as Spotify and Google Play. Google will now list these legal services in a box at the top of the search results, as well as in a box on the right-hand side of the page. Crucially, however, these will be adverts — meaning if legal sites want to appear there, they will need to pay Google for the placement.

4 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Is Google Losing It? by Forgefather · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The more I see this kind of stuff about Google being forced to modify search results based on dumb things like 'right to be forgotten' the more I can't help but feel that Google's results just might not be reliable enough anymore. I know that right to be forgotten is only a European thing but I still can't help but get the feeling that I am no longer getting the best results for my search.

    Although it brings bile to the back of my throat I think it may be time to see how Bing lines up against Google.

    --
    "There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
    1. Re:Is Google Losing It? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What if China decided that if Google wanted a Chinese presence they had to filter all results for all users globally?

      China really wants to be able to do this. Whenever you see UN statements about taking control of the Internet away from the US and putting it in the hands of a UN committee, what they really mean is "We want China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, etc to be able to say 'This website violates our laws so it must be removed from The Internet even though it is located outside our borders."

      This isn't to say that US control is a great thing, but when you get into a "lesser of two evils" choice of US or UN (i.e. China/Iran/etc) control, I'll pick US control every time.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  2. google is a search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And if it exists on the web, google should be able to find it.

    By all means, go after (Via legal methods) sites hosting content illegally, but stop fskering with my search results. Half the damn web is now unsearchable for one reason or another.

    Time to look at distributed, un-censurable search tech?

  3. Re:So really what's happening is that... by JonahsDad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I want to know is: If a piracy site wants to pay to place their ads in this box, will Google allow it?