DuckDuckGo blocks piracy websites from search results, denies such claims

[vannvicente]

What just happened? The privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has removed several major pirate websites, such as The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and YTS, from its search results. This move also includes YouTube-ripping services, which are considered a grey area in terms of legality.

Update (April 19): Following reports (including ours) that DuckDuckGo was removing certain pirate sites from its search results, CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg denied such claims this week, as seen in the tweet below. It should be noted, however, that the site was indeed not listing many of the mentioned sites properly, and this was not limited to the "site: operator," even if the removal was not intentional.

As noted by TorrentFreak, there was a confirmed removal of a group of sites, which were later identified to being delisted from Bing. DuckDuckGo builds its search results from a variety of third-party data from different sources, including Microsoft's Bing engine. The TorrentFreak article also mentions how bogus DMCA takedowns usually result in having sites or specific pages getting removed from search results, and that Bing is particularly sensitive to such actions.

Similarly, we are not "purging" YouTube-dl or The Pirate Bay and they both have actually been continuously available in our results if you search for them by name (which most people do). Our site: operator (which hardly anyone uses) is having issues which we are looking into.

— Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) April 17, 2022

The original story follows below:

DuckDuckGo is one of the most popular privacy-focused search engines and a renowned alternative to the data-hungry Google. Unlike other search platforms, the site doesn't keep a log of sensitive user information or share its search trends with advertisers.

The site has made another move that differentiates itself from Google in the past week: piracy-free search results. On Friday, Torrentfreak discovered that the site deindexed several popular pirate websites, effectively removing them from search results.

Piracy websites bid goodbye to DuckDuckGo's search results https://t.co/daBvoUlvht pic.twitter.com/SbvSBRa78z

— yugatech.ph (@yugatech) April 16, 2022

DuckDuckGo removed all domains for these sites entirely from its database, with search results being blank or only bringing up a single result. This crackdown includes several types of pirate sites, including torrent indexes, movie streaming portals, and blogs with downloads to cracked video games. However, many less popular piracy websites remain visible.

The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright issues, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content. Google has an automated system that eliminates possible DMCA-infringing entries, but that has done little to deter search results for the most popular piracy websites. They have also demoted piracy websites in certain regions, such as the UK.

Surprisingly, the removal includes the homepage to youtube-dl, a Python-based open-source downloader for YouTube and other online videos. Despite challenges from the RIAA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has defended the legality of youtube-dl, maintaining that the tool is crucial for archiving and documentation purposes.

DuckDuckGo has not yet responded to questions from journalists about the omission. The company recently entered the browser wars with the launch of its privacy-focused desktop browser for Windows and Mac, following their popular free browser for Android.

Image credit: Dawit

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/94234-duckduckgo-blocks-piracy-websites-search-results.html

 

[Nobina]

They should realize nobody gives a f about their stance on piracy or any other topic for that matter as they are a search engine. Focus on being a good service which means give people the results they are after and stay out of the way.

 

[merikafyeah]

Et tu DDG?

Well there's always Yandex and Rutracker

Brave Search also doesn't have such censorship shenanigans... for now.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

As if going woke wasn't enough...

 

[m4a4]

So much for my alternate when I can't find stuff on google.......

 

[hahahanoobs]

Privacy is a real issue, but this is just stupid.
Oh, it's not about privacy at all.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Welp, RIP DDG. Even google isnt THIS pozzed. Privacy my arse, this is moral grandstanding by the DDG devs.

Then again, this was expected, the guys behind duck duck go have sold out multiple previous businesses.

Et tu DDG?

Well there's always Yandex and Rutracker

Brave Search also doesn't have such censorship shenanigans... for now.

Yandex would actually be the best, given russia's recent stance on legalizing piracy, for finding pirated stuff.

Give brave time, they've cucked out numerous times to social outcry and are in the process of going "woke" themselves.

As if going woke wasn't enough...

It's really sad, no company n earth can seemingly make a decent product and just...maintain it. They HAVE to jump on the political train, or sell out their customer base, or turn into abusive pricks. It's all so tiresome.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Is DDG a platform or a publisher? But I guess they're now going to use the same sneaky TOS tactics like FB and Twitter by claiming they're a platform but will act like a publisher. This seems to be the trend among the "Woke" culture.

 

[dualkelly]

The proxy bay will give you all the pirate bays proxys but torrents are second tiered to direct download websites like release bb or 2ddl just get you a beautiful program called jdownloader copy links in including youtube videos and download away.

 

[PEnnn]

Does anybody on this site read the articles at all before whining (in this case) about their preferred piracy websites not being available on one search engine??

The article says: "The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright issues, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content."

Does DDG tell any of you how to run your business?? So what gives you the right to tell a company how to run its own business??

This absurd entitlement mentality is pathetic.

 

[merikafyeah]

Does anybody on this site read the articles at all before whining (in this case) about their preferred piracy websites not being available on one search engine??

The article says: "The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright issues, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content."

Does DDG tell any of you how to run your business?? So what gives you the right to tell a company how to run its own business??

This absurd entitlement mentality is pathetic.

You quoted it yourself but you seem to have glossed over the important part:
"The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright issues, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content."

And also the part where they delisted youtube-dl even though "the Electronic Frontier Foundation has defended the legality of youtube-dl, maintaining that the tool is crucial for archiving and documentation purposes."

If for nothing else this shows that DDG are a bunch of corporate kowtow-ers and limp noodles who don't deserve respect, and frankly it calls into question just how strongly they'd fight to actually defend user privacy.

 

[Eldritch]

DDG had recently started removing news from all sources except from few big corporations and now they are doing removal of sites that may harm earnings of big corporations.

I wonder who they are working for. /s

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Well I will now be calling it DuckDuckGone. How long before startpage does the same thing?

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

I can't say they've gone to far unless they start messing with the pornography. TPB fell off after that garbage that went down with them years ago. Surprised no one ever talked about it like that lol

 

[hahahanoobs]

Does anybody on this site read the articles at all before whining (in this case) about their preferred piracy websites not being available on one search engine??

The article says: "The change removes the potential vulnerability of DuckDuckGo to copyright issues, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content."

Does DDG tell any of you how to run your business?? So what gives you the right to tell a company how to run its own business??

This absurd entitlement mentality is pathetic.

It also says immediately afterwards:
Google has an automated system that eliminates possible DMCA-infringing entries, but that has done little to deter search results for the most popular piracy websites.

Done little. So what would DDG really have to worry about in terms of liability being the little guy compared to a giant like Google that is still letting the sites through?

@Eldritch His thoughts make way more sense as to why they did it.

 

[captaincranky]

It also says immediately afterwards:
Google has an automated system that eliminates possible DMCA-infringing entries, but that has done little to deter search results for the most popular piracy websites.

At least Google warns/tells you that "some results have been removed".

Hey at least it's something

 

[Kosmoz]

DOES ANYONE on this site CHECKS to see IF the so called "NEWS" are actually TRUE?

Here, it took less than 5 seconds... guess what?

 

[R00sT3R]

Lol..people still use the Pirate Bay & Torrents.

That's so last decade, Darling.

 

[Dimitriid]

Downloading youtube videos should not be "grey area" because there's no legal recourse youtube can site to say "You're legally not allowed to download a video". If they don't want a video to be seen for copyright reasons, they already have a *DIFFERENT SYSTEM* in place to withhold videos on the basis of copyright claims, but the difference is that they withhold them from *VIEWING* altogether (Or at least on some regions and such)

But being able to view a video, even once, should be *exactly the same as downloading it* It's ok if youtube wants to encourage repeated viewings on their site because of the likelihood of serving ads multiple times on repeat viewings but again, you can't say downloading a youtube video is illegal or even 'grey area' if *youtube themselves already allow this officially* if you happen to pay them an additional fee. In fact, that pretty much is grounds for immediate dismissal and duckduckgo is probably just folding down immediately and without resistance to some over zealous copyright holders that always want to push the envelope far beyond what they're well aware is legal justifications into just demonizing people viewing publicly and freely available videos.

 

[Sausagemeat]

DOES ANYONE on this site CHECKS to see IF the so called "NEWS" are actually TRUE?

Here, it took less than 5 seconds... guess what?

Yup, I’m not surprised. Happens all the time. Neil young never removed his music from Spotify either despite all the threats in the press.

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

Yup, I’m not surprised. Happens all the time. Neil young never removed his music from Spotify either despite all the threats in the press.

plenty of his music disappeared. the stuff he didn't own was left there. this was already confirmed at least as of february.

 

[Sausagemeat]

plenty of his music disappeared. the stuff he didn't own was left there. this was already confirmed at least as of february.

All his biggest hits are still there. What exactly was removed?

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

All his biggest hits are still there. What exactly was removed?

Everything the label controls. He doesn't make the music come down, the label does. His label nuked all of his content, which is why it looks so bare compared to how it was before, for people who actually looked. He has to appeal to every label that owns his music to get it removed. Majority of those big hits are no longer there, or at least accessible. A lot of his hits were also featured elsewhere like soundtracks. So for each version out there, even if it's the same song, it has to get removed separately by each entity that owns it.

Eat, Pray, Love soundtrack hosted Heart of Gold and Harvest Moon. Madison Gate Records on that version, yet those songs are also on his own album (Harvest) under the Reprise label. That's how the music industry works, which is why a lot of artists try to independently own their own music when possible, or else they run into issues when they want to exercise control over "their" music.

The current selection of music that includes him is clearly severely diminished, as people

 

[Sausagemeat]

Everything the label controls. He doesn't make the music come down, the label does. His label nuked all of his content, which is why it looks so bare compared to how it was before, for people who actually looked. He has to appeal to every label that owns his music to get it removed. Majority of those big hits are no longer there, or at least accessible. A lot of his hits were also featured elsewhere like soundtracks. So for each version out there, even if it's the same song, it has to get removed separately by each entity that owns it.

Eat, Pray, Love soundtrack hosted Heart of Gold and Harvest Moon. Madison Gate Records on that version, yet those songs are also on his own album (Harvest) under the Reprise label. That's how the music industry works, which is why a lot of artists try to independently own their own music when possible, or else they run into issues when they want to exercise control over "their" music.

The current selection of music that includes him is clearly severely diminished, as people

Interesting, it is bare but I didn’t check past the front page, I just noticed the really popular tracks that I know of are still there. His profile is still up on Spotify. The media wasn’t exactly integral about all of this. Casual listeners like me are still unaffected. And that’s most of these musicians listeners on Spotify.

And that means the headlines about him withdrawing his music are somewhat misleading. And I’m not a completely dumb consumer, I worked in live sound production as stage crew for years! I even worked on stage at Neil Youngs headliner at the Isle of Wight festival some years back.

 

[Buhaj]

As if going woke wasn't enough...

What do you mean? Did they do something woke?