Piracy: Google’s cleaning up of pirate download sites would pay off for studios

The joint action of ISPs and Google seems to show some effectiveness in the fight against piracy.

According to the Motion Picture Association (MPA), an organization that defends the interests of the biggest Hollywood studios, Google’s delisting of pirate sites greatly reduces the volume of illegal downloads of films and series, as well as streaming viewing.

After ISPs, Google blocks pirate sites

At the head of the MPA, Charles Rivkin welcomes the action of Google, coordinated with the help of its teams. According to him, the disappearance of this type of pages in the search results discourages Internet users from resorting to illegal methods to watch the productions.

A study was conducted to estimate the impact of dereferencing on the frequentation and use of these sites and the finding is clear: for them, no longer appearing on Google represents a much greater drop in traffic than simply blocking domains, which can be ordered by the justice of the states, by the access providers.

Charles Rivkin explains that a streaming site that is not displayed on Google’s results pages is viewed on average 50% less than a site that is only banned by ISPs. The proportion is lower for download sites, but they also feel the consequences of Google’s approach.

A delisting campaign in France

The Alphabet subsidiary has delisted pirate sites in a dozen countries, including France. The provision was not made following a court ruling, Google voluntarily assisted the MPA in combating piracy of works from Hollywood studios.

In addition to France, countries such as the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom are particularly affected. What do these states have in common? They all ordered ISPs to block illegal download and streaming pages. Search engines are not affected by these measures, but Google has nevertheless agreed to contribute to the effort. In all, around 10,000 domain names were removed from search results.

Source: TorrentFreak