Torrent sites have been targeted like never before in 2016. It all began with the arrest of KickAss Torrent chief in Poland who was wanted by the United States for copyright infringement, money laundering, and other charges. Just about sixteen days after Kickass torrents was taken down, Torrentz.eu mysteriously bid farewell to its users with a sweet message – “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell”. Soon, the internet torrenting community began seeing the demise of several popular websites, although most of them are now functional and working perfectly well. But things could change soon, not because of government authorities – but because of Google.
Google may soon ban torrent site links
Google and other search engine companies are working on a voluntary agreement with entertainment companies to tackle the growing piracy menace. The discussion took place recently and was chaired by UK’s Intellectual Property Office. All parties part of the discussion have agreed to put the new code into effect from June 1, 2017. Well, in just about three and a half months from now, you won’t be seeing torrent site links in search results anymore!
Why the ban?
The reason is kind of obvious – entertainment companies have long been asking Google to remove several links that promote pirated content. Companies are always asking for more from Google and despite Google taking several measures to prevent search results that promote pirated content from appearing, the internet search giant is almost always flooded with a billion take-down requests every year. It’s not practically feasible for Google to act on each of those billion take-down requests. So, Google and the entertainment companies are hunting for a middle ground – to try and reach the voluntary agreement.
“Since the idea was last discussed in [parliament], Intellectual Property Office officials have chaired a further round-table meeting between search engines and representatives of the creative industries. While there are still elements of detail to be settled, the group is now agreed on the key content of the code and I expect an agreement to be reached very soon” says Baroness Buscombe.
The deal, in all probability, will be signed. The new code is expected to take effect by 1 June 2017.
So, What is Next?
Well, there is nothing you can do as far as Google search is concerned. It is all up to Google whether it shows torrent links in the search or not, but users do not really need to worry. You can bookmark our best torrent sites page and visit them directly instead of searching in Google. Note that, we do not encourage our users to use torrenting for illegal downloads.
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