Call for illegal site demotion on search engines
 

Illegal content should be forcibly demoted in web searches, a group of UK rights holders has suggested.

The organisations argued that search sites were "overwhelmingly" directing users to illegal content.

The proposal - developed as part of government-organised talks - was made public by critics of the plans following a Freedom of Information request.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) said the report was "dangerous" and "Sopa-like".

Campaigner Peter Bradwell was making reference to the recent protests surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act in the United States.

"Yet again we're facing dangerous plans to give away power over what we're allowed to see and do online," he said.

"The proposals come from discussions that lack any serious analysis of the problem and boast barely a glimmer of democratic input or accountability."




'Vague proposals'

The ORG's Mr Bradwell told the BBC he had serious concerns about the plans.

"There's nothing there about how licensed or unlicensed or illegal sites are going to be determined. There's nothing in there about independent oversight and due process.

"It's just another example of extremely vague proposals based on fluffy evidence."

Richard Mollett, chief executive of the Publishers Association, told the BBC that the ORG was wrong to compare the plans to the controversial Sopa bill which spurred widespread protests earlier this month.

"Sopa deals with blocking rogue websites," Mr Mollett said.

"Whereas what these proposals are looking to do is work with search engines to demote infringing sites on their rankings.

"What we're saying to Google is that where we have a site where we are constantly sending notices, that information should be used by Google as a sign that site is an infringing site."

The search engines in attendance at last year's round-table - Google, Bing and Yahoo - are said to be putting together their own proposal due to be discussed at a meeting next month.

A spokesperson for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said: "The government is continuing to facilitate discussions between rights holders and search engines on industry proposals for tackling sites that are dedicated to copyright infringement."

Full story here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16740160

Lets hope this will bring youtube down lol its full of stolen content

So good idea or not ? I think its a very good idea and will support this

will you support it when they say obscene content should also be censored?

We could have AVS sites again! ;)

it is already being censored in the UK so no biggy there and it will only get worse.

what do you mean censored ? "hardware way" like in china or what ? how is it done ?

I've thought this for years. Relegate torrent sites to page 6, as a courtesy gesture to copyright owners. If google really wants the free internet they moan about, how about actually using the power they already have to eliminate 50% of the problem without doing anything else but page 6'ing them all. The people looking for the pirate stuff will just click page 6 anyways, so no harm done, and the average person won't be forced to reconsider their buying decision with a free offer from The Pirate Bay stacked above or below the people who actually made the product.

i dont get how Google would have a free internet by meddling with it..I think by free internet they mean that it is free from their meddling

So you think google does not meddle ?

You think google search results are based on what exactly ?

Google decides who gets their traffic 100%. Google could easily at a stroke cut pirate traffic with a single stroke of their algo.


:2 cents:

it's not already censored in the UK.

Aside from CP obv.