Google, Microsoft to curb internet piracy; code brokered by Britian's IPO

Soon websites hosting or streaming pirated material will not be featured on the first pages of leading search engines like Google and Microsoft. This news comes after the deal between search engines and British government is finally official after years of meetings that somehow never saw the light of day.

Britain's Intellectual Property Office (IPO), brokered the code by means of which they aim at curbing and stopping traffic from search engines being driven to illegal websites. Google and Bing will be demoting such websites to later pages, resulting in lesser traffic as compared to being on the first few pages. Further the demotion of websites hosting and streaming pirated material will be demoted on the basis on the copyright infringement notices served to them.

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Though the code is voluntary, the copyright watchdog will be keeping an eye for the next few months on how Google and Bing will respond to the code. Based on its assessment tighter measures may be enforced in the future.

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There are speculations on how this move will benefit performing artists from TV, film and music industries. In earlier discussions Google had mentioned and pointed out as to how search engines are not a major source of traffic to piracy websites. As of now it will be aimed at the UK web search results, thought it is very early to make any assumptions as to how this code will work and what are the results it will deliver. But with Google and Microsoft on the forefront of this move it will be interesting to see the developments that follow this move and how it all pans out.

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