RIAA claims Google's anti-piracy downranking doesn't work

Google offered an olive branch to content producers when it promised to downrank pirate sites in its search results last summer. Really, the RIAA was looking for the whole tree; it just published a report claiming that Google's technique hasn't had any tangible impact. The agency argues that the millions of takedown requests didn't lead to "significant" drops in rank for habitual violators. It further contends that many legitimate music sites only showed up in the top ten for about half of the searches, and were often kicked down the ladder by their bootleg counterparts. We're reaching out to Google to get its side of the story, but the RIAA isn't quite as patient: it's demanding that Google "immediately" change the results and volunteers its help. While that's a step forward from the music group's previous accusatory stance, it doesn't quite represent a two-way conversation on anti-piracy measures.