14 DAY TRIAL // If it wasn’t obvious up until now, the UK authorities are doing their best to close down or limit the amount of online piracy happening in the country.
While it was known that the UK Minister for Culture met with major representatives from the MPAA, BPI, Google and four mother ISPs last month, the minutes of the meeting have only now been released, TorrentFreak reports.
Since Google was also present at the meeting, its involvement in the anti-piracy battle the government has started seems to be a key factor.
More and more pressure is put on Google to fight alongside the authorities. Now, the Government wants to see the issue of infringing search results taken care of.
This means that sites containing such content or direct download links will no longer be available through Google’s search results page.
During the meeting, Google was the target of some complaints since they didn’t tweak their search algorithm, as it was demanded of them.
However, Google officials present at the meeting said that some modifications had been made, but more needed to be done for the algorithm to yield better results.
Legal action was also discussed during the meeting. Section 97a of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been used to block some torrent sites in the UK.
They are now suggesting that the same section could be used to provide Google with a legal basis on which to remove sites from its search rankings.
How much Google is willing to tweak their codes for the authorities is yet to be seen, but given the amount of pressure that is put onto them, there’s a chance they’ll break and do as they’re said.
Also noteworthy in judging how much Google is willing to comply with the demands is the fact that they are currently under investigation for paying too little taxes in the UK. If found guilty, they might have to pay billions in fees.