Google and Bing join Westminster's anti-piracy team

Alphabet and Microsoft became the latest players on the Government’s anti-piracy team this week, with both multinational technology giants agreeing to allow the copyright watchdog to monitor the results they supply through their respective Google and Bing search platforms.

The deal came after many years of lobbying from the creative industries, with both film studios and record labels accusing the two companies on multiple occasions of not doing their part in tackling online piracy.

Minister for universities, science, research and innovation, Jo Johnson, said the relationship between search engines and the UK’s “world leading” creative industries needed to be a collaborative one.

“It is essential that [users] are presented with links to legitimate websites and services, not provided with links to pirate sites.”

The new code - which the search engine providers signed up to voluntarily - committed them ‘demoting’ websites identified as being complicit in piracy.

In practice, that would mean web properties that are repeatedly served with infringement notices would appear much lower on the search results than websites that serve content legitimately.

It also called for Google and Bing to remove terms from their ‘auto-complete’ features that could help users to find pirated content.

Compliance would be monitored by the Intellectual Property Office in the coming months, who will then make a judgment on how effective the voluntary code was.

The office could then recommend further action in the summer if it feels it is necessary.