There are no shortages of sites that provide immediate access to pirated movies, television shows and movies. While those who use those sites, myself included, rarely struggle to find what we need without Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s help; the company has decided to change its algorithm to not show results from the most notorious sites. I’m not boasting when I admit to downloading pirated material, I’m simply admitting it and with the caveat that I live in Guatemala and often have no other choice.
New piracy report
“In August 2012 we first announced that we would downrank sites for which we received a large number of valid DMCA notices,” wrote Google’s senior copyright counsel Katherine Oyama in a blog post published on Friday (17 October).
“We’ve now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites. This update will roll out globally starting next week.”
While Oyama failed to mention specific sites that would essentially be removed, one can only assume that a number of popular torrent sites will be included.
Google recently published a new version of its report that details “How Google Fights Piracy” and Oyama’s announcement was made in conjunction with the publication of the new report.
Google search changes: From DCMAs to entire sites
Google, according to Oyama, is also looking at changing its ads so those looking for pirated materials will be given links to sites where they can obtain it legally. Also, Google is planning on changing its autocomplete features in search to not focus on potential pirate sites. It’s all about the DMCA notices that are requests by those that hold the rights for content to be removed.
“In 2013 we received just over 224 million DMCA requests for Google search results,” explains the updated report, which claims that the average time taken to deal with these requests is less than six hours.
“We ultimately removed 222M, which means we rejected or reinstated less than 1% after review because we either needed additional information, were unable to find the page, or concluded that the material was not infringing.”
While that’s a pretty good, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) is trying to do better by focusing on entire websites.
