DuckDuckGo removes search results for major pirate websites

DuckDuckGo’s crackdown on dodgy content material now extends to digital bootleggers. TorrentFreak has found that the search engine now not lists outcomes for some main pirate web sites, together with The Pirate Bay, 1337x and Fmovies — search for something from their domains and you may come up empty-handed. Streaming and stream-ripping websites like Flixtor and 2conv additionally produce no outcomes, whereas different pirate shops (similar to RarBG) could solely flip up one outcome as an alternative of the lots of of 1000’s you see elsewhere.

The positioning for the video obtain instrument YouTube-dl additionally produces no outcomes regardless of latest defenses of its legality. Whereas the RIAA has portrayed YouTube-dl as a piracy instrument, the Digital Frontier Basis, GitHub and others discovered that it would not rip DRM-protected materials.

We have requested DuckDuckGo for remark. As TorrentFreak says, although, legal responsibility for copyright violations could be a difficulty. The corporate eliminated pirate “bangs” (shortcuts for pirate websites) way back to 2018, and opponents like Google and Microsoft are already downranking piracy-related outcomes. A transfer like this might defend DuckDuckGo in opposition to expensive copyright battles.