BPI wants Google, search engines to censor illegal downloads

Andre Yoskowitz
17 Dec 2010 1:30

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), besides posting huge piracy numbers for the UK, has also taken shots at Google, claiming the search engine is used just as often as P2P apps for illegal downloads.
Furthermore, the trade group would like Google and other engines to censor their search results and instead push legal services like iTunes, Amazon and others.
Says the BPI (via TF):

"Search engines are as popular as P2P applications as a source of illegal downloads. It’s not hard to see why. Key in the name of any popular artist, add search terms like ‘mp3′ or ‘download’ – both neutral terms – and typically the large majority of results that appear are blatant links to illegal downloads."

To test its hypothesis, BPI searched for many of the top pop songs and found that search results almost always included links to unauthorized downloads as top results.
"In a single week in November, BPI test searches were made on Google for the UK’s top 20 singles or albums, followed by ‘mp3′. On average 17 of the first 20 Google results for singles and 14 of 20 search results for albums were links to known illegal sites," said the BPI report.
The trade group directly names Mediafire, mp3raid and Megaupload as "illicit" sources for music downloads.