Google is again criticized by the UK MPs for failure to curb music and movie piracy. The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee accused the tech giant of offering the thinnest of excuses to avoid taking action against widespread piracy. The government complaints that the problem costs the creative industry millions of pounds in lost revenue annually.
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The MPs didn’t accept the explanations from Google that some of the “notorious” websites may also host legal content, and it therefore can’t block all of them. They called Google foremost among tech giants in being able to influence coalition policy-making and pointed out that they had received multiple complaints from across the creative industries about Google.

British MPs claimed that online pirates convicted of running commercial sites which rip off music, movies and video games should face up to 10 years in jail, up from the current maximum of 2 years. In response, Google claims that it does take down copyright-infringing content when it is notified of it. But it remains under the constant pressure from creative industry groups for moving too slowly or failing to take action.

Google revealed that it removed over 20 million links to pirated material from the search results in August 2013 alone. However, search itself is not the problem, because only 8% of infringers in the United Kingdom use Google to find illegal movies and 13% to find illegal music. The search giant is working harder than anyone to help the entertainment industry protect its content online.

The industry experts admit that the suggestion to raise the custodial penalty for piracy isn’t new. It was suggested in a private members bill many years ago, but was reignited in 2012 by the conviction of a site operator who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for running a website linking to pirated video.

The copyright owners claim that the creative industries are of huge importance to the UK economy, but it is put at risk if content creators can’t rely on a strong framework of intellectual property rights. The MPs claim that serious copyright infringers should be targeted with notifications without delay and urged the government to resolve the current impasse over the DEA by implementing the Online Copyright Infringement Code. The latter allows ISPs to send warnings to suspected copyright abusers.