Google to soon ban torrent sites

Reacting to the number of complaints and negative feedback received from entertainment companies, search engine giant Google is gearing up to ban torrent sites. Google, along with others, is taking this stand to prevent online piracy.

According to a report by Torrent Freak, the search engines have entered a clause to stay away from 'promoting' the torrent sites. The discussion, which was  chaired by the UK's Intellectual Property Office, included search engines like Yahoo and Bing, among others, reportedly resulted in an agreement being reached to tackle the appearance of torrent sites in search results.

A draft amendment to the Digital Economy Bill committee would allow the government to impose a code of practice on search engines. However, after a recent meeting, the various companies decided that such a regime would not be needed. Baroness Buscombe from the committee said,

Since the idea was last discussed in [parliament], Intellectual Property Office officials have chaired a further round-table meeting between search engines and representatives of the creative industries. While there are still elements of detail to be settled, the group is now agreed on the key content of the code, and I expect an agreement to be reached very soon.

The report from Torrent Freak further added that this will be applied from June 1, 2017, although the decision is yet to be formally announced and the companies are yet to speak on the topic. As of now, this move will be restricted to the United Kingdom, but it will be interesting to see whether the measures will work uniformly around the world.

Also read : Kickass Torrents is back, and it looks like it’s here to stay

Currently, a simple Google Search of 'torrent sites' will bring up a list of the most popular such sites, which includes names like Kickass Torrents and The Pirate Bay.

This news comes after Torrents announced its comeback after a short ban. According to a report by Torrent Freak, a few of the original members of the KAT crew put their heads together to bring the defunct website back to life under a different domain name. Identical to its predecessor in appearance, the site comes with a clean-user database and a proper DMCA takedown procedure.