RIAA: Google Guilty of Piracy Apathy

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade organization which represents the interests of U.S. recording industry distributors, says that Google isn't doing enough to prevent copyright infringement and piracy.

In a recent report, the RIAA claims that Google has done very little to prevent people from pirating music -- despite the fact that the search giant promised to focus significant attention on discouraging piracy roughly six months ago.

RIAA: Promises Remain Unfulfilled

And while RIAA lawyer Steven M. Marks says that the RIAA does "recognize and appreciate that Google has undertaken some positive steps to address links to illegal music on its network," the organization maintains its position that "Google's pledge ... to demote pirate sites remains unfulfilled." (Source: cnet.com)

The RIAA is referring to a promise made by Google in August 2012. At that time the firm said it would introduce measures designed to penalize any site found to be in illegal possession of copyright materials.

Specifically, Google said it would make accessing those sites harder by reducing their search rankings.

However, the RIAA says that Google isn't keeping its word. "Six months later, we have found no evidence that Google's policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy," the RIAA noted in its report. (Source: cnet.com)

Worse still, the RIAA says it has found that these sites "consistently appear at the top of Google's search results for popular songs or artists" and that "Google's auto-complete function continues to lead users to many of those same illicit sites."

Legal Download Sites Not Ranked High Enough

In addition, the RIAA says that sites and services which offer access to legal music downloads, including Amazon, iTunes, and eMusic, are not appearing prominently enough in Google search rankings. (Source: bgr.com)

Google has not yet responded to the RIAA report.

It's worth noting that Google, which offers music downloads via its Google Play service, stands to benefit from a crack down on piracy. Perhaps the company simply needs more time to initiate a new search algorithm.