Google defends piracy drive

The world’s creative industries will no doubt be buoyed by Google’s decision to adopt a pro-active stance towards supporting rights holders, but with net neutrality very much at the top of the agenda right now the search firm has been formed to defend its decision.

Google is not in a position with respect to copyright infringement to work out what’s legal and what’s not,” Google EMEA’s copyright, policy and communications manager Simon Morrison said in a conference call, transcribed by Music Ally.

We talk to rights holders all the time about these sorts of issues, and that has been raised. We’re interested in helping creators because that helps us. We are taking a two-pronged approach to copyright infringement: you have to have good anti-piracy practices, and you have to create new business models and opportunities.

If you make it easy for people to buy legal content, they are less likely to hunt down pirated content.”

However, Morrison insisted that these new measures do not compromise the notion of internet neutrality.

We aim to provide the best search results possible and if there is infringing material, we need to make it easy for rights holders to let us know,” he added.

Today’s announcement is in part about making that process more efficient for rights owners. It is not about altering the search results. Those [infringing] sites won’t be removed from the search results. The search results will stay the same. This is more about helping content owners make money online, and helping users find legal content.”