MPAA’s Dodd accuses Google over film piracy

Chris Dodd, the former US Senator who now chairs the Motion Picture Association of America, has accused Google of not doing enough to deter internet users from finding pirated content online.

The search engine changed its algorithm in late 2012 in a peace offering to Hollywood, following the collapse of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that was set to become law until technology companies mobilized internet users against it. The algorithm change proposed by Google was designed to relegate sites offering pirated content to lower rankings in the company’s search results. However, a recent report commissioned by the MPAA found the change had no “significant” effect on “listing placement . . . the search results consumers accessed were not lower in ranking than before the algorithm change”. Dodd said that “in too many cases” a search would still take users to illegal sites. The change had no effect: “nothing happened,” he said. “I want to be positive about this . . .[Google] is a great company, they do a terrific job in many ways and they made a great offer [to change the algorithm]. Everyone can do a better job on this but the search crowd needs to step up.”