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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
What one thing could Google do to placate the labels?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 14 October 2014
As Google continues to prep its all-new YouTube audio streaming service and an overhaul of its existing Google Play streaming platform, the web giant’s relations with the music industry remaining strained over its perceived inaction in assisting rights owners in the battle with online piracy.
And while Google strongly rejected recent allegations made by News Corp that it is “sometimes contemptuous of intellectual property”, for some in the content industries forcing the web firm to do more to stop its search engine from linking users through to copyright infringing content is piracy policy number one.
In the latest CMU Digest Report, Business Editor Chris Cooke reckons that the single biggest thing Google could do to placate the labels is de-list from its search engine all sites – and proxies linking to sites – that have been the subject of web-block injunctions.
He writes: “The single biggest thing Google could do is start automatically delisting any website that a court of law has decreed is liable for widespread copyright infringement, ie those which are web-blocked. When lyrics service Rap Genius broke Google’s own SEO rules late last year the web giant did a very good job of exiling the site from its search engine. So why not, the record labels and music publishers ask, the websites that have been confirmed as copyright infringers in court?”
“Because that single measure – delisting web-blocked sites and the proxies linking to them – would revolutionise the web-blocking tactic for battling piracy. Of course, serial file-sharers are always five steps ahead, but that’s not who web-blocking initiatives are trying to stop. Anti-piracy campaigns like this are aiming to redirect more casual mainstream web-users towards legit download and streaming platforms”.
The boss of UK record label trade body the BPI, Geoff Taylor, confirmed to CMU that it is looking for more from the web giant in the fight against piracy, saying: “Google’s efforts to address piracy have so far been, in the words of the Culture Select Committee, ‘derisorily ineffective’. The recent report from the Prime Minister’s IP Advisor, Mike Weatherley, set out a series of measures search engines should take to stop helping the online black market and instead promote legal sites that are safe for consumers”. And that list, Taylor added “includes delisting sites that courts have ruled are illegal”.
The latest edition of the CMU Digest Report also considers the implications of the collapse of the Global Repertoire Database project, how copyright could be better communicated, and the one thing the labels could do to placate their artists. There’s also an interview with the founder of innovative new ticketing app Dice.fm. You can download the PDF report for £9.99 from the CMU Shop.
CMU Digest subscribers received a link to download their copies in last week’s weekly email bulletin. To receive twelve copies of the Report plus a weekly news digest and other benefits for just £50 a year, become a CMU Digest subscriber by clicking here.
