The UK Government questions Google’s “reluctance” to block infringing material

The UK House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee has released a report that slams Google for their reluctance to block websites that infringe copyright.

The report, Supporting The Creative Economy, released last Thursday, was assembled after months of hearings, including some with Google Head of UK Policy Sarah Hunter, selected transcripts of which can be found here.

The report questions why Google is able to block child pornography, but has been evasive regarding the removal of websites that infringe copyright. While the UK government certainly isn’t suggesting the two crimes are of the same magnitude, the point remains that Google has the technology to block such sites.

“We are unimpressed by their evident reluctance to block infringing websites on the flimsy grounds that some operate under the cover of hosting some legal content”, the report states.

“We do not believe it to be beyond the wit of the engineers employed by Google and others to demote and, ideally, remove copyright infringing material from search engine results.

“Google co-operates with law enforcement agencies to block child pornographic content from search results and it has provided no coherent, responsible answer as to why it cannot do the same for sites which blatantly, and illegally, offer pirated content.”

The report concludes with this strong statement, an impressive stance from a government agency, which may see this issue gather steam. “We strongly condemn the failure of Google, notable among technology companies, to provide an adequate response to creative industry requests to prevent its search engine directing consumers to copyright-infringing websites.”

The entire report is availble to be downloaded here and here, but be warned: it’s not a fun read.