Google and Bing accused of directing users to illegal copies of music

[alexalex]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/26/google-bing-illegal-music

Major rights holders claim search engines make it 'difficult' for people to find legal music and films online

Entertainment groups want Google to 'effectively screen' mobile apps on Android smartphones in an effort to combat illicit sharing.

Google and other search engines "overwhelmingly" direct music fans to illegal copies of copyrighted tracks online, a coalition of entertainment industry groups has told the government.

In a confidential document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, lobbying groups for the major rights holders claimed Google andMicrosoft's Bing are making it "much more difficult" for people to find legal music and films online.

The private document, obtained by the free speech campaigners Open Rights Group and shared with the Guardian, urges the government to introduce a voluntary body that would remove rogue websites frominternet search results.

The proposals were made to the culture minister Ed Vaizey as part of a series of consultations on internet piracy between rights holders, search giants and the government in November last year. The nine-page document was submitted on behalf of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK body for the music majors, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Association and the Pact, the film and TV independent producers' trade body.

Privately, rights holders said there is a "spirit of optimism" between the entertainment groups and search engines as they attempt to usher in more legal media sites, including Google's own fledgling music service.....

[ObiWanToby]

The entertainment industry is annoying. I can't stand this news anymore. I do think we'll get to the point where Blu Ray's will be tied to your own blu ray player. No more borrowing. They want complete control over EVERYTHING that could potentially infringe on their sales. I get that piracy is bad, because well, it is. But the entertainment industry is annoying and dangerous.

[Growled Member]

Best way to stay out of trouble these days is to not show any results for music and films.

[szo]

I think what might happen either 5 or 10 years from now is that everything is going to be streamed from the cloud. This might be a long shot, but this will require the availability of very high speed broadband everywhere, abundance of wifi hotspots, decrease of 3G/4G/LTE costs, and major improvements of battery life. We already have thin clients being used in the enterprise along with vmware virtualized applications. I think the entertainment and software industry will eventually stop the creation of bluray media and installable software to curb piracy. I know a lot of SaaS (software as a service) web applications have subscription pricing and you can't pirate these software because you have to keep paying to use them. It's already starting with Ultraviolet and their pay per movie system and it's hard to move your ultraviolet movies elsewhere. Chrome OS isn't capable of much right now, but eventually its concept will be quite widespread in many other industries just like how Onlive is streaming video games and virtualized software use with subscriptions. Adobe is also planning to start experimenting with subscription pricing for their new Adobe CS6 software called Adobe Museo. Even Adobe sells its suite on subscription pricing. What's not to say that in the near future, they might make this the only option of using their software.

[szo]

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[Gerowen]

I think the entertainment industry needs to be dismantled and sued into oblivion. They're really starting to suck all the joy out of the internet, and I'm not even talking about anti-piracy measures, I'm talking about how far they're taking things. I agree people shouldn't be able to illegally download content they haven't paid for or received rights to use, but these guys at the RIAA, MPAA, and similar organizations are going overboard. Who do they think they are to decide what an automated search engine should and should not display? Google alters its search results based on what is popular, and they want Google employees to start manually modifying what is displayed and how it's displayed?

[bjoswald]

Oh, boo-hoo. Cry to someone who cares. Besides, it's not their fault; Google and Bing simply index the web. It's the retards who make the piracy sites that are to blame. If they didn't make their search terms (or keys, or tags ... whatever they're called) illegal crap like 'free music', 'free downloads' and etc., they wouldn't be cached and we wouldn't have this problem.

[remixedcat]

if the people that run the RIAA and MPAA hate the new world so much they can do us all a HUGE favor and die lonley miserable slobs in a freaking cave or jump off a freaking skyscraper.

[Original Poster]

The entertainment industry is annoying. I can't stand this news anymore. I do think we'll get to the point where Blu Ray's will be tied to your own blu ray player. No more borrowing. They want complete control over EVERYTHING that could potentially infringe on their sales. I get that piracy is bad, because well, it is. But the entertainment industry is annoying and dangerous.

I agree they say their rights are being infringed upon but by removing those sites from google and as you say making blurays lock to a player... they take away our right of gaining information and freedom which in the US and UK is a major part of human rights and this is stupid it has already been proven that those who download illegal music spend more on it a year then anyone else so shuuutttuuuppp

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

we should stop breathing in case we steal THEIR oxygen