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Google Joins Australia's Piracy Crackdown by Tweaking Search Results

posted by janrinok on Wednesday May 15 2019, @05:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the do-no-evil-only-when-it-suits-us dept.

Chocolate writes:

"Give us torrents or give us freedom!" Cried absolutely no one in Australia after Google decided to start filtering out torrent site results from search queries submitted from Australian locations.

The tech giant has voluntarily agreed to remove sites that facilitate copyright infringement from its search results, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Google has reached a voluntary agreement with Australian ISPs and content rights holders to de-index sites that have been blocked by internet providers under recent laws.

With the search giant of the internet on their side local content owners will no longer need to jump through hoops and costs to petition for sites to be occluded based on a purely voluntary agreement between ISPs and and content owners. The Australian Federal Government introduced laws in 2015 for blocking sites deemed to be breaching copyrights, following up in 2018 with 65 sites and over 378 domains blocked. This way of dealing with the issue has been roundly criticized for years by interested parties.

In response to this recent agreement a spokesperson said "Google supports effective industry-led measures to fight piracy," while local content representative Graham Burke has said that "Google is leading people to the back door" "shamelessly facilitating crime by leading people to pirate sites" while everyday Australians follow the advice of a former Communications Minister and just use a VPN making the filtering by Google moot.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by SomeGuy on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:17PM (#843931)

    Your search - anything - did not match any documents.

    Suggestions:

            * Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
            * Try different keywords.
            * Try more general keywords.
            * Give up on this crufty old search engine and go elsewhere.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   3  

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @08:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @08:17PM (#843959)

    The Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuture: Your search - anything - did not match any documents.

    The Preeeeeeeeeeeesent: Your search - anything - get tons of similar sounding results but none containing all your keywords or relevant to your search.

    I think that your future is better. At least won't get the spam.