What simply occurred? The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has eliminated a number of main pirate web sites, comparable to The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and YTS, from its search outcomes. This transfer additionally contains YouTube-ripping providers, that are thought of a gray space by way of legality.
DuckDuckGo is among the hottest privacy-focused engines like google and a famend various to the data-hungry Google. Unlike different search platforms, the location does not preserve a log of delicate consumer data or share its search tendencies with advertisers.
The website has made one other transfer that differentiates itself from Google previously week: piracy-free search outcomes. On Friday, Torrentfreak found that the location deindexed a number of well-liked pirate web sites, successfully eradicating them from search outcomes.
Piracy web sites bid goodbye to DuckDuckGo’s search outcomes pic.twitter.com/SbvSBRa78z
— yugatech.ph (@yugatech) April 16, 2022
DuckDuckGo eliminated all domains for these websites completely from its database, with search outcomes being clean or solely citing a single consequence. This crackdown contains a number of sorts of pirate websites, together with torrent indexes, film streaming portals, and blogs with downloads to cracked video video games. However, many much less well-liked piracy web sites stay seen.
The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright points, regardless of not internet hosting any of the copyrighted content material. Google has an automatic system that eliminates doable DMCA-infringing entries, however that has achieved little to discourage search outcomes for the most well-liked piracy web sites. They have additionally demoted piracy web sites in sure areas, such because the UK.
Surprisingly, the removing contains the homepage to youtube-dl, a Python-based open-source downloader for YouTube and different on-line movies. Despite challenges from the RIAA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has defended the legality of youtube-dl, sustaining that the software is essential for archiving and documentation functions.
DuckDuckGo has not but responded to questions from journalists concerning the omission. The firm just lately entered the browser wars with the launch of its privacy-focused desktop browser for Windows and Mac, following their well-liked free browser for Android.
Image credit score: Dawit
