The UK secretary of state for culture, Jeremy Hunt, is reportedly going to push Google to start doing something about online piracy this week. A speech by Hunt is expected on Wednesday, September 14th, which will press on Google to block copyright infringing websites.
The Financial Times is reporting that Hunt will target search engines, advertisers, and credit card companies in his speech pushing them to take “reasonable steps” in order to “make life more difficult” for copyright infringing websites.
Apparently if no private sector action is taken after Hunt’s speech, the government may create legislature forcing the issue with the upcoming Communications Bill. Hunt is expecting to address the Royal Television Society’s Cambridge Convention saying;
“We do not allow certain products to be sold in the shops on the high street, nor do we allow shops to be set up purely to sell counterfeited products. Neither should we tolerate it online.”
“We intend to take measures to make it more and more difficult to access sites that deliberately facilitate infringement, misleading consumers and depriving creators of a fair reward for their creativity.”
So what exactly does Hunt want to see? He’s looking for search engines to push sites deemed unlawful or copyright infringing, down in their listings. Advertisers are expected to pull ads in an effort to choke revenues to these sites. Essentially, by dropping a site from listings either entirely or by decreasing its ranking, these sites would be harder to locate. All this really does it eliminate the public’s ability to effectively search for a site, but it doesn’t kill that site altogether.
The government has mainly focused their efforts up to this point on the ISPs themselves. A recent example was the ruling that provider BT must block Newzbin because it provided access to copyrighted content.
Google has responded to requests to remove links to infringing content. They report it takes approximately four hours for a “reliable” takedown request to be processed, but Google refuses to block entire websites, only particular pages. There’s also the matter of what Google deems “reliable” since it doesn’t exactly define that word with specific metrics. One could imagine “reliable” means any request coming from a court order or the content holders themselves.
Time will tell if the Communications Bill actually makes it out of parliament in any form that will actually force search engines to participate in site blocking. Hunt is pushing hard for the concept that online should be treated the same as offline in terms of protecting content.
“It is fundamental to our concept of law that it should apply to everyone without fear or favour. This means it must apply equally in the virtual world as in the physical world,” Mr Hunt will tell media industry executives.
“The government has no business protecting old models or helping industries that have failed to move with the times. But those new models will never be able to prosper if they have to compete with free alternatives based on the illegal distribution of copyrighted material.”
Hunt seems serious about the fight against copyright infringement online. Time will tell if his ideas can be realized through pressure on search engines, advertisers, and credit card companies or if the government will have to step in and try to pass legislation on this issue. Do you think it’s the government’s place to put forth this kind of legislation or does it impact the concept of free speech online? Should Google start blocking sites because the government says so? Weigh in on this in the comments.
