Google forced to remove piracy keywords from autocomplete in France

The French Supreme Court has ordered that Google should strop promoting online piracy by ceasing to autocomplete terms with words such as ‘torrent’, ‘rapidshare’ and ‘megaupload’. Google instant and autocomplete searches were adding piracy related keywords to searches for popular artists. For instance if you were to input “Rolling Stones 40 Licks” the search engine may suggest within the dropdown list of choices some extended phrases such as “Rolling Stones 40 Licks torrent” or “Rolling Stones 40 Licks rapidshare”.

In our experience in the UK such Google autocomplete suggestions do not appear. We have already had a lack of piracy related suggestions for over a year. Google already blocks these keywords and others from autocomplete of its own volition. Also the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has requested Google to take down tens of thousands of search links to suspected pirated content. So, again using the above search as an example “Rolling Stones 40 Licks” brings up a first page of ‘kosher’ links, but as soon as the second page the following notices appear at the end of the search results list “In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.”