French Supreme Court: Google must filter autocomplete for piracy

The highest court in France has ruled that Google can be prohibited from supplementing artist names or song titles with ‘piracy terms’ such as ‘torrent’, ‘Megaupload’ and ‘Rapidshare’ by means of autocomplete.

The French music industry’s advocate, SNEP, filed a lawsuit against Google in 2010 to end the practice of Google automatically completing search terms about music with things such as ‘torrent’, ‘Megaupload’ or ‘Rapidshare’. Lower courts ruled against SNEP, but last week France’s highest court ruled in favor of the music industry.

According to the French Cour de Cassation, Google must take steps to prevent illegal downloading from being encouraged in a search. “Autocomplete automatically displays terms based on searches from all internet users”, Google defends itself according to ITEspresso. The SNEP speaks of a unique decision in France, “which shows that search engines must play a role in regulating the internet”.

The French Supreme Court has now referred the case back to the Court of Appeal in Paris, which will reconsider the case. According to Torrentfreak, incidentally, it is a matter of principle; Google has stopped using piracy-related terms with autocomplete and instant since last year. This filtering has no effect on the ‘normal’ search results.