The French Supreme Court may force Google to remove terms including 'Torrent', 'Rapidshare' and 'Megaupload' from its Instant and Autocomplete search tools.
The search engine has been embroiled in a back-and-forth on the matter with the French music industry group SNEP (that's the Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique, Francophiles) since early 2010.
The reason being, SNEP says, that autocompleting 'torrent' or the name of a filesharing site after an artist name is tantamount to facilitating piracy.
Sneppy sneps
It hasn't gone well for SNEP over the past couple of years ? two lower courts ruled against it, prompting the group to head to the Supreme Court where it's had more success.
The court says that Google isn't responsible for the content of these links but should be in favour of making it harder to find pirated content.
Google, for its part, has already removed a lot of piracy-related terms from Autocomplete ? so if you start typing 'to?' into Google it won't suggest you finish up with 'rrent'.
So why fight? This case sets a dangerous precedent for rights holders to demand Google filter search suggestions more and more rigorously; the company, which has been outspoken about more damaging forms of censorship in the past, will want to keep as much control over its search tools as possible.
Although the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the SNEP, it's not a done deal yet; the case is now with the Court of Appeal which will have the final say.
From Torrentfreak
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