Surely it would have made more sense, and been a lot more "clean-cut" to simply de-list these sites. A demotion means they will still carry some level of rank. This is a bit like Google playing judge over the rank of illegal sites. Just drop them!

Mack.

It mystifies me, too. If it's illegal in a a particular jurisdiction, surely, complete removal ought to be the route to go.
Surely, if people realise you just go to page six and get all the stuff they want, it'll be easy to find. Perhaps it won't work that way.

How many people are searching Google/Bing each day, for "illegal content" ? If this kind of content is no longer available, this might cause a significant loss of traffic for the Search Engine ...

What does "demote" mean if you're searching for something that has no law-abiding variant in the first place? You just have to figure out what search string to use, and up to the surface it floats.

Wonder why it took this long for *any* action to be taken in the UK. They've been gone from search in the US for years.

The occasional pirated movie/music site does make its way into the US index but pretty quickly taken down. I think the RIAA, ASCAP, Harry Fox and others may have something to do with that. I've read they are diligent about policing.

If this is applied globally, I can see a lot of lost jobs at Google and copyright enforcement companies. No need to review sites manually at Google. Copyright enforcement being automated (reduced visibility) would mean the copyright enforcement companies are out of jobs too.

Surely it would have made more sense, and been a lot more "clean-cut" to simply de-list these sites. A demotion means they will still carry some level of rank. This is a bit like Google playing judge over the rank of illegal sites. Just drop them!

Demotion could be argued to be part of the algorithm being used. Deletion could be considered as editing and thus open up a whole world of legalistic hurt for Google in its various cases. The UK is still in the EU until the exit legislation is activated and Google is still the subject of legal actions in the EU.

Regards...jmcc

Google told me they aren't doing anything, this is just an understanding. They already have things in place for removing pirated content.

Thanks for the update rustybrick. Not sure Google's doing a great job on that right now. I can find stuff if i want to, and i'm sure the people that want it will do, too. I was hoping that this agreement will enable the redoubling of efforts. I hope so.

Rustybrick,
Do you believe what Google told you in light of Google's legal problems in the EU? Is this just something that Google's press people are telling technology journalists so that it can be seen to be "doing" something about pirate content sites? It also seems to be UK-focused and there have been prosecutions there for people running pirate content sites and sites that link to those sites. There was also a recent case in Ireland where the content providers asked the courts to order ISPs to block a number of pirate movie sites. Against this legal background, do you think that this is just Google spin rather than actual Google activity and editing or manipulation of its index?

Regards...jmcc