Google Gets Pulled Into International Piracy War

From DailyTech: As U.S. officials announce a massive piracy crackdown initiative in the states, music industry leaders in the UK appear to be coming after Google. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a trade organization that represents music companies like EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner in the UK, sent the internet giant a cease and desist order.

The order demanded that Google take down not only direct links to nine BitTorrent sites, but any reference to them as well. The organization did not pinpoint specific URLs where pirated material could be found, as is usually the case, but instead provided whole site URLs.

Now the groups parent company, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), is getting in on the fight. IFPI is specifically going after The Pirate Bay and is demanding that Google take down all references to the filesharing website.

Citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Google's Report Copyright Infringement support page, the company ordered Google to remove The Pirate Bay from its index and to disable any access linking or referencing the search engine to The Pirate Bay website.

The company's methods have some news watchers wondering whether IFPI is positioning itself to go after Google with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Search engines are not currently held liable for data that they enable access to.

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