French court tells Internet search firms to block pirate video sites

A court in France has ordered Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to block 16 video-streaming pirate sites from their search results. The High Court in Paris ruled the websites were dedicated to the "distribution of works without consent of their creators," the BBC reported Monday. The sites in question broke French intellectual property laws and were "almost entirely dedicated" to the illegal distribution of copyrighted material, the court said. It made the ruling in a case brought by groups representing film companies, distributors and producers. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo must move to ensure the blocked pages cannot be found in a list of search results, the court said. The ruling "recognized the merits of the approach [of] forcing ISPs and search engines to cooperate with right holders in the protection of the law of literary and artistic property on the Internet," the groups bringing the case said in a statement. Google, in a statement of its own, said it was disappointed with the court's decision. The search companies were given two weeks to implement procedures to block the sites from appearing in searches.