Google to ban all torrent sites soon

Image: Screen grab from Google

The United States Federal government has continued to crack down on several prominent video-sharing sites (commonly known as torrents), and it looks like Google and other search engines may soon join the fray.

With online piracy on the rise in recent years, Google will reportedly prohibit the appearance of torrent sites on its result pages.

According to Torrent Freak, Google officials, along with other industry leaders like Yahoo and Bing, have already teamed up and discussed plans to come up with a self-regulation code which could combat such content.

The report stated that in the United Kingdom, the proposed scheme is already being backed up by the Parliament and may be nearing the completion and implementation phase, as “it’s been hoped that the parties will sit down and reach a voluntary agreement.”

“While there are still elements of detail to be settled, the group has now agreed on the key content of the code and I expect an agreement to be reached very soon,” Parliament representative Baroness Peta Jane Buscombe was quoted as saying in the report.

The English politician also lauded the tech companies’ efforts, as well as their willingness to address the ever-growing piracy issues which have reached global scale.

“The search engines involved in this work have been very cooperative, making changes to their algorithms and processes, but also working bilaterally with creative industry representatives to explore the options for new interventions, and how existing processes might be streamlined,” she said.

Despite the seemingly daunting task of completely banning all torrent sites, Buscombe already has a date in mind for its implementation.

“All parties have also agreed that the code should take effect, and the targets in it be reached, by June 1 this year,” the Baroness said, adding that it will most likely take effect on the United Kingdom’s search engines first. Khristian Ibarrola/JB