After a big pressure from the British government, both Google and Microsoft have agreed to stop showing piracy sites. They planned to make it harder for people to download pirated content from any torrent sites. Instead, legal and authorized download sites will be prioritized.
Google And Microsoft To Stop Viewing Piracy Sites
According to Forbes, both Google and Microsoft have pledged to make it harder for people to download pirated content from torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickAss Torrents. The two giant companies have agreed to start working on this project immediately and the changes are expected to filter within the middle of this year. "Search engines play a vital role in helping consumers discover content online. Their relationship with our world leading creative industries needs to be collaborative," minister of state Joseph Johnson said.
Johnson is a Conservative Party politician and has been the Member of Parliament for Orpington since May 2010. He became the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office in July 2014 and the Minister for Universities and Science in May 2015. Johnson also said that consumers are increasingly heading to the internet for online music, movie films, e-books (in pdf) and a wide diversity of other files. He also said in an interview that the files are essential and that they are presented with the links to legitimate websites and services, not provided with links to pirate sites."
Recommendation From The Intellectual Property Office
As reported by The Verge, aside from the two tech giants, Intellectual Property Office (IPO) will also be able to recommend further action toward the search engine companies. IPO is one of the many government organizations that is responsible for ensuring that all the users' intellectual property (IP) is only used as an effective tool for national development. With this legislation, adding fines or sanctions for all the non-compliance companies will be possible somewhere down the line.
