Google changes 'to fight piracy' by highlighting legal sites
Quote:
Google has announced changes to its search engine in an attempt to curb online piracy
The company has long been criticised for enabling people to find sites to download entertainment illegally.
The new measures, mostly welcomed by the BPI, will instead point users towards legal alternatives such as Spotify and Google Play. Google will now list these in a box at the top of the search results, as well as the right-hand side.
However, these will be adverts - if legal sites want to appear there, they will need to pay Google for the placement.
In numbers:
The BPI made 43.3 million requests for Google to remove search results in 2013 (RIAA made 31.6 million)
Google removed 222 million results from search because of copyright infringement
Google's Content ID system, which detects copyrighted material, scans 400 years-worth of video every day
300 million videos have been "claimed" by rights holders, meaning they can place advertising on them