DuckDuckGo, the popular privacy-focused search engine, has removed pirate sites and YouTube-DL from its search results. This move comes as a response to recent pressure from the entertainment industry, which has been increasingly aggressive in its efforts to combat online piracy. DuckDuckGo had previously resisted such pressure, but it seems that the company has now decided to take a more proactive approach. In a statement, DuckDuckGo said that it “does not condone piracy or copyright infringement” and that it hopes “this change will help protect content creators and copyright holders.” It remains to be seen how effective this change will be in combating piracy, but it is clear that DuckDuckGo is taking the issue seriously.
DuckDuckGo has blocked more than 2,000 bangs from popular destinations including The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and RARBG in recent days. When the search engine said these sites were still present in search results at the time,
Several well-known pirate websites no longer showed up in DuckDuckGo’s worldwide search results this morning, while we were doing some research. We initially thought that certain popular pages had been deleted as a result of DMCA takedown notices, but there is clearly much more going on than that.
