Search engines to 'help tackle' copyright infringing

Search giant Google is ‘not’ reportedly planning on putting a permanent ban on all Torrent websites, as many media reports stated earlier. A few days ago, news broke out that Google will be banning the torrent websites, which is not entirely true. Google, along with other search giants are supposed to optimise the presentation and promotion of copyright-protected work.

Torrent websites are known for sharing content that is illegal. However, not all content on torrent websites can be termed as illegal. Torrents help share large amount of data, with ease and speed. The data could be anything from casual videos, research data to large files and alike. It could be a video you shot, an audio you recorded or even an operating system you developed and want to share them for free with friends and public. Sharing of data on the torrent and P2P services is not considered illegal. What is illegal is sharing data on these websites that are ‘you’re your property’.

Torrent and P2P websites are bad named simply because people use this platform to share illegal stuff at large. Copyrighted material such as music, videos and software are largely available on P2P websites, which are illegal. Sharing personal data is completely allowed. Sharing of large files on email or cloud services is difficult and torrenting them makes it easier to share such amounts of data. Using P2P services makes sharing large data easy because each user’s PC acts as a server to seed the data for others who are leeching on it. This makes it easier and lowers the stress of a single server sharing the large data. For example, if you were to share a 1GB file on a single server and millions of people are downloading it, you end up paying for higher server costs. Torrents help share the same data with ease and speed, and most importantly, free of cost. However, with thousands and millions of people sharing illegal and infringing copyrighted material via torrents, the P2P platform has a bad name.

Not long ago, Google was blamed for not doing anything about curbing the access to these websites. Google was pointed out for giving search results from torrent websites which hold illegal data. However, the search engine does not analyse if the data is legal or not and it is just a search result for Google.  

In the recent news, TorrentFreak’s report stated that Google and other search companies are close to striking a voluntary agreement with entertainment companies to tackle the appearance of infringing content links in search results. The report, however, does not speak on anything with relation to a ban or blocking of such websites. It merely informs that the search giants Google, Yahoo and Bing along with Hollywood representatives and the other involved parties have agreed to help curb the piracy issue online.

During a Digital Economy Bill committee, a discussion on copyright infringement turned to the role of service providers — the search engines. The discussion was about search engines optimising the presentation and promotion of copyright-protected work.

A draft amendment to the bill would allow the government to impose a code of practice on the search engines, forcing them to deal with illegal material. The key content of this code is presently in being agreed upon and could come into effect within a few months from now. All parties have agreed and the code could come into effect by June 1, 2017.

The new code will affect the visibility of allegedly infringing results.