Google Refuses to Delete Pirate Websites From Its Search Results

The on-going argument between Google and the copyright industry looks set to continue in public and privately. The point of disagreement lies within Google refusing to remove pirate websites from its search results with Eric Schmidt from Google enforcing this stance. He goes on to state that Google is in the process of making changes to decrease piracy, although deleting websites and monitoring the web goes against Google’s primary principles and philosophy.

This argument has been stretched over a number of years with the entertainment industry urging Google to stop “pirate sites” showing up on their results pages. Due to this Google has taken on board these issues and has implemented a large number of measures to decrease the amount of copyright infringement.

They started this by firstly removing these pirate sites and related terms from their instant and suggested services. They then went on to down ranking these websites based upon the number of DMCA requests they receive.

According to copyright holders however the action taken by Google isn’t enough. Recently the RIAA has shown that on numerous occasions pirate search terms still rank higher than legitimate stores.

Copyright holders essentially want Google to entirely remove domains from their search results which are infringing copyrights. Although Eric Schmidt of Google claims this will not be happening in the near future and if it does it certainly won’t be voluntarily.

“The industry would like us to edit the web and literally delete sites, and that goes counter to our philosophy,” Schmidt said in a press meeting at the Allen & Co. conference this week. He goes on to state that Google are fully aware of infringing sites and measures are in place to decrease the amount of traffic reaching these sites. “It is an absolute fact that there are pirate sites and we’ve done things to reduce the amount of people who use them,” Schmidt says.

Even with this being said Google remains adamant that it is not their role to police the internet and remove sites. They believe that it is the copyright holders issue to take these websites down by legal means.

“Our position is that somebody’s making money on this pirated content and it should be possible to identify those people and bring them to justice,” notes Schimdt.

As you can see from the comments made by the Google chairman, they have a clear stance that they will not be removing any websites in the near future. That being said, the copyright holders are not looking to end their pursuit either.

From looking at things from the outside it would be no surprise if we see these two giants settling their dispute in court in the coming years.

Source: http://torrentus.to/blog/google-refu...h-results.html