In what can be called an agreement of its kind, the two US tech giants, Google and Microsoft have signed an agreement that will see a major crackdown on pirated content within their search engines. This comes amidst immense pressure from various affected persons including the art and music industry who lobbied via the government. The agreement was signed under a code, named the “code of practice” that required the two giants to remove links related to pirated content. This landmark deal comes after lengthy periods of lobbying and accusations directed at these two companies, accused of turning a blind eye to piracy problems.
The Initial Struggle
Initially, the search engines had clashed with organizations that represent right holders on the various strategies to tackle pirated content. The music industry, to be specific, has blamed Google for neglecting the fact that pirated content is being spread through their channels under their watch. With the increasing demand for online content in the music, film, e-book and many other contents, the need to present legitimate links is important. Recently, pirated content and links had flooded the online search engines, making them among the best-visited sites.
However, after signing this truce on February 9th, the government and other creative industries will certainly begin to benefit from their hard work. This clampdown will see the search engine operators and copyright watchdogs bring down unlawful websites. This truce will be monitored by the Intellectual Property Office for compliance over the next few months. Special legislations are being put in place to impose fines and other hefty sanctions to users and websites found using defying the measures. Additionally, this initiative will run parallel with other presently existing anti-piracy measures.
Intense research provides a report that at least 15 percent of internet users have at one time accessed pirated content. This could be in the form of music, movies or TV. Pirated content was gaining popularity due to many factors. First and foremost, they were easily available. Many people claim that legitimate or legal content is largely unavailable over the internet. Price is the second factor that promoted pirated content. Compared to legal content, pirated and easily available is much cheaper and available. Additionally, there was intense confusion on what is legal and what wasn’t. With this said, increasing the availability of legal content and providing them at a good price could be the best option.
The Way Forward
Top content providers prefer streaming subscriptions over downloading alternatives. With increasing internet availability, customers also prefer this option. This is why streaming programs such as Netflix and Spotify are increasingly becoming popular compared to downloading options such as Google searches and iTunes. With this deal signed, service providers have already begun their actions. The latest being contacting copyright infringers making them aware of their illegal actions. With such warnings, ignoring repeated alerts warrants more actions, which could include site blocking and reducing the amount of advertising the pirate sites enjoy currently.
With the institution of these laws, a marked reduction of piracy sites will be evident. This will prime the creation of many legal contents to fill the gap left by drowning the illegal sites. Additionally, the search engine automation feature that is responsible for ranking websites will bring legal site among the top searches. This will be certainly a marked turn-around to developing legal content.
Benefits of Piracy Blocking
The presence of piracy sites in the online and internet dependent industry had caused many disastrous effects. Blocking these sites has been associated with the following benefits.
- It will increase the profitability of content creation: Piracy sites had drowned the profits that legitimate content creators enjoyed previously. Content pirates only required the legal producers of the content to post their stuff online. After, they could create a subsidiary and similar content, generate links and optimize their content. By doing this, search engine automation feature in the search engines would easily pick up their content being the top ranked drowning the legal content. For products, many users would be driven to these sites even without their knowledge. This leaves few customers to the original site or content creator and ultimately, reduced profits. Pirated content is also sold comparatively cheaper compared to legal content. Customers on a strict budget, therefore, opted for this.
- Improved quality: Pirate content creators valued less about the quality of their products. This led to a rampant decline in the quality of products and services being offered. With the elimination of such sites, therefore, you should expect better quality content.
- Improved quantity of content: Similarly, content quantity declined over time due to the effects of piracy. Signing this deal that will see an end to piracy, therefore, reassures many content customers of better quantity.
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Conclusion
With the two major tech giants signing this truce, it is expected that online content will grow bigger and better. Besides, music, film and movie creators are bound to enjoy more fruits of their hard work. However, proper and strict measures should be taken by the Intellectual property office to ensure that the measures agreed upon are observed to the later. Additionally, more stern legal actions should be imposed to infringers of legal content.
