6:07 p.m. | Updated Big media companies won a battle in the fight to combat online piracy on Friday when Google said it would alter its search algorithms to favor Web sites that offer legitimate copyrighted movies, music and television. Google said that beginning next week its search algorithms would take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices Web sites have received. Web sites with multiple, valid complaints about copyright infringement may appear lower in Google search results. “This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily — whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music Web site, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify,” Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of engineering wrote in a company blog post. The entertainment industry, which has for years pressured Google to act against online piracy, applauded the move. “We are optimistic that Google’s actions will help steer consumers to the myriad legitimate ways for them to access movies and TV shows online,” Michael O’Leary, a senior executive vice president for the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement. Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, commended Google on the move. “Google has signaled a new willingness to value the rights of creators,” he said in a statement. Individual artists, musicians and film makers also stand to benefit from the changed algorithms. But Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Sherman expressed caution and urged Google to implement the change with the vigor it adopted in stamping down on pirated videos on YouTube. “The devil is always in the details,” Mr. O’Leary said. While Mr. Sherman added, similarly, that changing the search algorithm “is not the only approach and of course, the details of implantation will matter.” The announcement comes just over six months after an epic battle between big media companies and technology companies over a pair of bills designed to crack down on pirated online content particularly from rogue foreign Web sites. In January media companies like Viacom, Time Warner and the Walt Disney Company backed SOPA and PIPA — short for Stop Online Piracy Act (the House bill) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (the Senate bill) — while Internet activists and companies like Google and Facebook, buoyed by a huge online grassroots movement, argued the bills would hinder Internet freedom.Wikipedia went black and millions of consumers signed online petitions to protest the bills, which quickly died. That tension has decreased as media companies have regrouped with Silicon Valley executive over how to combat online piracy. Google said it would not remove pages from copyright-infringing Web sites from its search engine unless it received a valid copyright removal notice from the rights’ owner. “Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed,” Mr. Singhal said. Google said it had received copyright removal requests for over 4.3 million U.R.L.’s in the last 30 days, according to the company’s transparency report. That’s more than it received the entire year of 2009. Source http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.c...ct-a-sites-history-of-copyright-infringement/
"alter its search algorithms" is just another way to say "forges its search results". Nothing new here.