Google must help protect copyrights, says MP

INTERNET SEARCH GIANT Google must help media firms in their fight to stop copyright infringement according to Jeremy Hunt, the UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Hunt is due to start imploring the search firm and others to help the government continue to help rights holders to keep their majority grasp on the commercial value of their artists' output. If they do not agree, he will encourage them further.

According to the Daily Telegraph he will make the call today at the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention, and the paper added that unless the search firms tag along with the idea they might be forced into it through legislation.

"We intend to take measures to make it more and more difficult to access sites that deliberately facilitate infringement, misleading consumers and depriving creators of a fair reward for their creativity," Hunt reportedly will say.

Hunt will argue that online businesses deserve the same protection as high street shops, and seems to be suggesting that policing the internet for copied material will be as easy as policing physical stores and markets for knockoff goods.

"We do not allow certain products to be sold in the shops on the high street, nor do we allow shops to be set up purely to sell counterfeited products. Neither should we tolerate it online," he will say.

"The government has no business protecting old models or helping industries that have failed to move with the times. But those new models will never be able to prosper if they have to compete with free alternatives based on the illegal distribution of copyrighted material." µ