Ineffective Censorship of the Web Continues

Despite the ineffectiveness of web blocking, big media groups continue to chip away at internet freedom by demanding that search engines, like google, censor their search results.

To date 1782 search results for tpb.pirateparty.org.uk have been removed from Google's search in response to demands from BPI, Sony Music, EMI, Universal, Warner Music, Columbia Records and others. These are all links that have been indexed by Google via our proxy service rather than links on our site.

Google are being ordered to modify their search results to remove links to links on the basis that they may eventually lead to material belonging to the organisation making the request. We haven't been formally contacted by any of these groups, instead they seem to be relying on third parties to send DCMA take down requests to search engines on their behalf. This censorship is of course totally ineffective, users can still reach all the pages that are removed from Google's results by simply using the search box on the front page of The Pirate Bay.

Pirateparty.org.uk is currently listed by Alexa as the UK's 1101st most popular site in terms of traffic, the highest ranking of any political party. Our proxy has seen in excess of 20 million hits in the last two weeks.

An example of the takedown requests sent to Google can be seen here and Google have made a full list is available in their Transparency Report.

Andrew Robinson
Culture & Media spokesperson
Pirate Party UK
@andyppuk

campaigns@pirateparty.org.uk

Contact:
press@pirateparty.org.uk
+44 (0) 161 987 7880