Google is to change its search results and advertising formats to help fight online piracy.
The tech company pledged to "demote" links to pirated content and instead provide links promoting legal alternatives such as Spotify or Beats Music.
In theory, this means that users searching for "Radiohead album free" or "Miley Cyrus torrent" will be directed to legal alternatives rather than illegal torrent sites or peer-to-peer networks.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The catch is that the company is not going to do it entirely free of charge. Links to legal music services will appear at the top of search results in the form of paid advertising slots, encouraging companies to buy them.
However, Google will also adjust its search algorithm so that illegal links are pushed down, which should mean that the legal alternatives naturally float to the top.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said that it "broadly" welcomed Google's changes, but said that the service should not come at a price.
"There should be no cost when it comes to serving consumers with results for legal services," a spokesman told the BBC. "Instead we have urged Google to use the machine-readable data on the Music Matters website, which lists all services licensed in the UK, and to promote these legal services above illegal sites and results in their search, using appropriate weighting applied fairly and equally across services."
Google has long been criticised for not doing enough to help combat illegally downloaded entertainment.
In a report coinciding with the announcement of the new measures, the company reemphasised its long-held view that piracy is at least in part the fault of publishers. "Piracy often arises when consumer demand goes unmet by legitimate supply," the report said.
"As services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated, the best way to combat piracy is with better and more convenient legitimate services."
-
‘A legacy news brand brings a visibility of its own’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
8 of the best ‘cozy crime’ series of all timeThe Week Recommends Murder mysteries don’t necessarily have to make us miserable, and these shows have perfected a feel-good crime formula
-
Youth revolts rattle Morocco as calls against corruption grow louderTHE EXPLAINER Snowballing controversy over World Cup construction and civic services has become a serious threat to Morocco’s political stability
-
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?Today’s Big Question US-UK tech pact, supported by Nvidia and OpenAI, is part of Silicon Valley drive to ‘lock in’ American AI with US allies
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
South Korea's divide over allowing Google MapsTalking Points The country is one of few modern democracies where the app doesn't work
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Is AI killing the internet?Talking Point AI-powered browsers and search engines are threatening the death of the open web
-
Unreal: A quantum leap in AI videoFeature Google's new Veo 3 is making it harder to distinguish between real videos and AI-generated ones
-
Google's new AI Mode feature hints at the next era of searchIn the Spotlight The search giant is going all in on AI, much to the chagrin of the rest of the web
-
Is Apple breaking up with Google?Today's Big Question Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser. The emergence of artificial intelligence could change that.
