Code of conduct agreed earlier this week staves off new anti-piracy laws aimed at search engines – for now,Communications,Internet,Strategy,Legislation and Regulation,Cloud and Infrastructure ,Cloud,Search,Duckduckgo,Google,Yahoo,Yandex,Bing
The voluntary ‘anti-piracy code’ agreed between search engines and the government means that mandatory anti-piracy laws aimed at Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines with operations in the UK will be shelved.
The code was agreed earlier this week and will oblige Google and Bing to make it harder for people to find pirated media on their search engines. However, following an agreement over the voluntary code the amendment to the Digital Economy Bill currently making its way through Parliament was withdrawn.
However, the code won’t be applicable to DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Ixquick, Blekko, CC Search, Yandex and other search services well beyond the reach of British law. Furthermore, if the code does not have the desired effect, the government – or Parliament – may well come back with even tougher requirements.
The voluntary code will take effect from 1 June 2017 and will see sites linked to piracy radically downgraded by the biggest search engines.
