Creative industries propose traffic light system to warn internet users away from piracy sites

The endless debates around web site blocking and piracy continues to rumble on, with no consensus on the best ways to approach the issue, as internet service providers (ISPs) and right holders continue to clash.

At a Westminster Forum event on Thursday, which brought together numerous stakeholders to discuss the issue, many said that blocking web sites was not the right answer to the problem, and that what is needed is a change in internet users' attitudes.

Consumer Focus senior policy advocate, Saskia Walzel, highlighted the pointlessness of site blocking, arguing most people just find ways to circumvent the blocks, a point backed up by BT Group head of internet policy Mita Mitra.

"We often assume this takes a lot of technical knowledge but actually an awful lot of people will find solutions to the blocks," she said.

"Instead of talking about whether blocking web sites will be effective, maybe we should instead think about how people want to consume content and how to respond to this."

PRS for Music regulatory and corporate affairs director, Francis Lowe, made a simple but sensible suggestion based on research by the organisation that more than half of consumers find pirated material through search engines but many do not know the difference between legal and illegal sites.

As such, she proposed a "traffic light" system that could be implemented by search engines to alert consumers to illegal content. Legitimate results would be flagged with a green dot, while illegal sits would have a red dot.

However, a Google spokeswoman in the audience piped up to say that such a system may not work as search engines would not be able to tag start-ups and new businesses fast enough.

Despite this, Google has previously said it will work to reduce copyright infringement in its search results, and the firm has taken the word "torrent" out of its predictive text for searches, so it clearly has the ability to help where it can.

Ultimately, though, it's just another day of debate and conjecture with those involved no closer to a system they are happy (enough) to work together on in order to tackle piracy.

20 Oct 2011