Google and Microsoft agree to censor pirated movies, music, and sport websites in the UK

Google and Microsoft have signed an anti-piracy agreement put forth by the British Intellectual Property Office to demote piracy websites in search results in the UK. The agreement will see Google Search and Bing's search results for copyrighted movies, music, and sporting events affected from June 1, 2017.

The search providers are improving algorithms which will demote the search results for websites that infringe on copyrights, specifically those in the UK. The IPO's press release notes that the censorship will target websites which repeatedly infringe upon UK copyright, as opposed to websites which may have fallen afoul of laws by accident. As a result, search results in Google Search and Bing should bring up legitimate content providers and streaming services such as Netflix, rather than illegitimate content-serving websites.

Though you might not think it, most popular search engines engage in various forms of censorship of the results. Google has removed content that infringes upon the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other illicit material for years, and some governments, such as China, use search engines to censor certain news events or historical information. There are some search engines that pride themselves on not censoring results and are rapidly gaining traction.