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21 February 2017Copyright

Google and Bing join IP owners to reduce piracy

Google and Bing have partnered with IP organisations based in the UK to reduce piracy by demoting problematic websites in searches.

The “first of its kind initiative” was announced yesterday, February 20.

It is led by the Alliance for Intellectual Property, the British Phonographic Industry and the Motion Picture Association.

The initiative’s aim is to reduce the availability of infringing content accessed through online searches.

Following a government-chaired series of roundtables, a voluntary code of practice will “kick-start” the collaboration between the parties to demote links to websites that are dedicated to infringing content for consumers in the UK.

The UK Intellectual Property Office led the discussions along with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The code aims to “accelerate” the demotion of illegal sites following notices from rights owners. It establishes ongoing technical consultation, increased co-operation and information-sharing to develop and improve the process.

It will also enable new practices to be adopted where needed.

According to the release, the parties want to work together to ensure customers have easy access to legal content and aren’t being inadvertently led to infringing websites.

A core aim of the code is to ensure that users looking for legitimate content are “much less likely” to come across links to infringing content.

There will be collaboration to improve auto-complete suggestions, which can also lead users to infringing search results.

The agreement will run in parallel with existing anti-piracy measures including the consumer education campaign Get it Right from a Genuine Site.

Eddy Leviten, director general at the Alliance for IP, said: “The alliance has been present throughout the discussions and has consistently made the case for a collaborative process that works for all rights holders and creators and starts to help the UK’s IP generators to promote and sell their works without unfair competition.”

A Google spokesperson told WIPR: “Google has been an active partner for many years in the fight against piracy online. We remain committed to tackling this issue and look forward to further partnership with rights holders.”

A spokesperson for Microsoft, which owns Bing, added: “We are pleased to have reached agreement on this code of conduct for search-related copyright issues, and we thank the UK government for driving this industry-wide initiative forward."

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