In another futile attempt to curb piracy, search engines are set to ban links to torrent sites in their search results, allegedly starting June 2017.
Working with the UK government, the search engines have been in discussions to come up with an agreement of the actions they will take and how they will implement them. As it stands, it is just as easy to access torrent sites as it was before these rather pointless attempts to ban them began.
The original plan, was for the government to add an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, allowing the government to implement a code of practice, which the search engines would have to stick to, however, since then it has been addressed by the search engines and it has been agreed that such a measure will not be necessary, and there are ways in which they can deal with the situation, without being dictated too on how this is done.
This gives the search engines more room to test their ideas and best way to try to tackle the issue, whilst being free from a government that has absolutely no idea how the internet works.
These measures, for now, will be in implemented in the UK only, although this may be viewed as a test phase and if successful (probably not), it could be rolled out globally, although it’s hard to see the general public being very happy about this.
Torrent sites in themselves are not illegal, however they are continuously slammed and targeted by developers, copyright holders and out of touch governments. Attempts to remove torrent sites just see another 10 sprouting up, in fact, since attention to these sites has been highlighted in the media, their popularity has only increased.
Without going off on too much of a tangent, I along with many others, have always considered the problem to lay at the feet of the intellectual property holders and developers. There are reasons people use torrent sites, and they need to discuss WHY people download from them, and not how.
A prime example would be the actual cost they put on their games or music, is asking full price £40-60 for an unfinished game that requires DLC to complete fair? Does that superstar mega artist “singer” really need that 4th house, or is this simply a case of greed?
If you want to take a look at the Bill in its current form, take a look here.
Do you think banning torrent sites from search results will work (probably not)? What would you do to address the issue?
