UK Recording Industry Doesn't Want Google To Reduce Piracy Until It Reduces Piracy

from the trapped-in-the-past dept

The body which represents the UK's biggest record labels says it "doesn't make sense" for Google not to tackle piracy when it's launching a new, legal music service.



Google says it wants its new music service, Google Play Music, to wipe out piracy on Android devices.



But the BPI claims the firm is not keeping its promise to make it harder to find illegal download sites.

Techdirt has written before about the self-destructive vindictiveness of the copyright industries, which would rather die in a futile attempt to stamp out piracy than embrace new ways of making money that will help to reduce piracy anyway. Here's another example of this blinkered approach from the UK , pointed out to us by Techdirt user Zakida We know that when music streaming services became available in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, illegal downloads were halved . The BPI's obsession with punishing illegal download sites blinds it to the fact that Google plans to launch a far better way of dealing with them: not through extrajudicial censorship in the form of doctored search results, but simply by offering something that people are happy to pay for. The UK recording industry should be embracing new ventures like Google Play Music wholeheartedly, not using them as bargaining chips in its pointless fight over search results.

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Filed Under: legal services, piracy, uk

Companies: bpi, google