Google blacklisting file-sharing sites The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and more

Google has started blacklisting many of the top file-sharing websites on the Internet, including torrent site The Pirate Bay, as well as isoHunt, and 4Shared. According to file-sharing blog TorrentFreak, “the changes were quietly processed and appear to be broader than previous additions”. Google’s blacklist also evidently blocks the names of these websites in their Google Instant, auto-complete search services, while the webpages themselves remain indexed. Why? Possibly because the search giant most likely wants to be on good terms with copyright holders, such as major movie and music studios.

While there is no silver bullet for infringement online, this measure is one of several that we have implemented to curb copyright infringement online,” Google manager of global communications and public affairs Mistique Cano previously said to TorrentFreak. She also detailed that “this is something we looked at and thought we could make some narrow and relatively easy changes to our Autocomplete algorithm that could make a positive difference”.

isoHunt owner Gary Fung said told the blog in an interview, “It’s a lot more subtle than the censorship attempts made possible by the pending PROTECT IP and SOPA bills, but it’s still censorship and it starts small. Google is increasingly becoming a self-righteous Big Brother of the Web. So much for ‘Do no evil’”.

The searches “thepiratebay,” “the pirate bay,” “isohunt,” “torrentreactor,” “btjunkie,” “kickasstorrents,” “sumotorrent,” “btmon,” “extratorrent” and many others are now excluded from ‘Autocomplete‘ and ‘Instant‘, as well as “4shared,” “filesonic” and “fileserve.” We’ll see what Google’ll do in the future. And, by the way, this is from a company who’s motto is ‘Don’t be evil’. Just in case you didn’t know.