In an ideal world, search engine users would be presented with the most authoritative set of results in response to a specific search.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world but companies like Google, given the scale of the task, do a reasonable job of helping us find what we’re looking for, with some caveats.
Piracy-Related Searches Are Tampered With
By design, Google and other search engines have been deciding what’s ‘best’ for us for years. After all, it’s their own algorithms that decide which sites appear in response to any kind of search. Precisely how these decisions are made are closely-guarded secrets but in more recent years and under pressure from copyright holders, we known that Google has been heavily tampering with piracy-related searches.
The general line is that Google voluntarily demotes and downranks sites for which it receives large numbers of valid DMCA notices. The theory is that sites are punished for continually infringing copyright so when users search for a particular movie, for example, torrent and streaming sites aren’t presented as the top options.
As a result and unless searchers use a considerable amount of ‘Google-Fu’, Google is no longer a good place to find pirated content. In fact, people are more likely to find scammy and dangerous sites instead, as they bubble their way to the top to occupy the vacuum.
Need the Pirate Bay Or a Proxy? Forget Google
With The Pirate Bay the ‘proud’ receiver of millions of copyright complaints, searching for the site by name in Google is almost pointless. Even though the search term clearly shows what the user is looking for, the site doesn’t appear in the first few pages of Google’s results, unless people search for its precise domain.
However, with the site blocked by ISPs all around the world, what millions of people are actually looking for these days is Pirate Bay proxy services that facilitate access to the site. Over time, these also receive millions of complaints so Google downranks these too.
DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, produces exactly what one might expect as a result of these searches – ThePirateBay.org on the top and a list of Pirate Bay proxies respectively.
DuckDuckGo is Less Comprehensive But Also More ‘Honest’
Search engine DuckDuckGo has a tiny 0.5% of the search market but with its pro-privacy stance, is increasingly favored when it comes to seeking out pirate content. The results that appear in response to searches tend to feel much more authentic when compared to those presented by Google, a suggestion perhaps that less or even no ‘tampering’ is taking place.
While this might not please copyright holders, DuckDuckGo’s relative obscurity doesn’t make it a prime target for them right now but in a bizarre twist we noticed this week, it appears Google has somehow determined that its rival is the most authoritative option when it comes to a particular ‘pirate’ search.
Google’s Algorithm Promotes DuckDuckGo to the Top Spot
This week it was revealed that in Australia, Google will voluntarily block proxies and mirrors of pirate sites without being presented with a court order. This followed a similar agreement in 2019 which saw Google de-index more than 800 pirate sites.
This move piqued our interest so we carried out a simple Google search for “pirate bay proxies”. The screenshot below reveals what we were presented with.
Accurate But Surprising in More Ways Than One
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this top result is that Google is promoting a rival’s service. This is interesting since whenever it reasonably can, modern-day Google has a tendency to recommend its own product. Had it done that here, however, users would get caught in an infinite loop of finding little of value.
The other interesting thing about this valuable top-spot placement is that it promotes a custom search on DuckDuckGo when indexing internal searches of other sites is usually discouraged by Google itself.
All that having been said, Google has arguably done its job here to perfection. Either by design or otherwise, its algorithms have determined that DuckDuckGo is the best place to find Pirate Bay proxies. And they have got that absolutely spot on.
The Bigger Picture of Search Engines and Piracy
It’s worth noting that if we look at the history of piracy on the Internet, it existed long before Google was founded. In fact, most early online piracy didn’t rely on today’s searchable web at all, with locations of file dumps mostly spread via word of mouth, early chat technologies, and newsgroups. But back then, of course, a whole generation was yet to be born, with most parents still unaware that the Internet existed.
The point is that while mainstream piracy arguably began with Napster, it only exploded when the content of eDonkey and BitTorrent networks became searchable on the web. Search engines, rightly or wrongly depending on viewpoint, played a massive role in that. What we will probably see in the next few years, however, is that role diminishing again.
By choice or by force, Google will undoubtedly clamp down further on piracy and its rivals will eventually have to follow suit. It may take a while but basic searches will no longer prove useful to pirates and they will have to find other ways to educate themselves on where to find content.
Most large file-sharing discussion communities – and there were many – died out years ago, partly due to waning interest, partly due to the rise of social networks. But mainly because piracy was no longer niche and presented on a plate, often via search engines.
These communities may have to rise again because (and you can quote me on this) Reddit, Facebook and similar platforms will eventually go the same way as search engines when it comes to piracy.
