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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl that it is important to deal with the position of search engines, which are not directly addressed by Clause 18. Google is very good at blocking access to sites; it just relegates them to page 256. If it does not like something that comes up it just disappears in the rankings. There are mechanisms commonly used by search engines to make it inconvenient for people to find content that Google does not approve of. To go back to what the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said, it is a question of taking ISPs and search engines and joining them in, so as not to let them think that in some way they are isolated and can act all on their own without any thought of how they fit into the mesh of copyright—the melding of the interests of the consumer and the producer that lies at the heart of it. All the players have a part and we should protect what search engines do assiduously. We must be careful not to start acting like the Chinese Government. On the other hand, as I am sure that they will not, they should not think that they can stand completely aside and act with complete freedom as if they do not have a role in how copyright is protected on the net.