U.K. pressures Google to block online piracy sites

The Entertainment Retailers Association reported that file-sharing sites have cost online retailers more than £250 million since the anti-piracy Digital Economy Act was passed in June 2010. The ERA is calling on the government to enforce the law more efficiently to lessen retailer losses.

In an effort to combat illegal sites, U.K. Secretary of Culture Jeremy Hunt has recently called for Google and other search engines to block sites that contain copyright-infringing material from search results. In a speech to the Royal Television Society, Hunt said he wants to make it harder for file-sharing websites to prosper, and urged internet firms, advertisers and credit card companies to stop doing business with websites containing unlawful content, BBC reported.

In response to the U.K. government's call to remove pirate sites from its search results, Google said the site must remain neutral.

"Without a court order, any copyright owner can already use our removals process to inform us of copyright infringing content and have it removed from Google Search," Google said in a statement.

To proactively eliminate the infringing sites, Hunt recommends changes to the Communications Act that is expected to be passed by 2015, including a cross-industry agency that will find infringing websites, a streamlined legal process for so the courts to can act quickly and a framework that will put responsibility on search engines, credit cards and advertisers to stop working with these sites and enabling them to prosper.