London: British MPs have reportedly accused Google for jeopardizing thousands of jobs in the country by failing to block pirated content on its search site.
The Culture, Media and Sport select committee condemned the search giant`s efforts in tackling online piracy as `derisory`.
The committee said that the creative industries were worth 36billion pounds-a-year to the British economy and employed 1.5 million people, but warned that the jobs would be put at risk if they could not rely on tough intellectual property safeguards, the Independent reports.
The creative industry estimates that piracy costs it 400million pounds in lost revenues a year out of which, one-third of films watched online are viewed unlawfully and 1billion pound worth of music is illegally downloaded annually.
The committee said that Google`s efforts showed its reluctance to block infringing websites on the flimsy grounds that some operate under the cover of hosting some legal content.
The committee`s chairman, John Whittingdale said that the continuing promotion of illegal content through search engines is simply unacceptable and efforts to stop it have so far been derisory.
He further said that if Google and other sites are actively working against child porn, they should also do the same for illegal, pirated content, the report added.
ANI
