hadopi

The goal of a search engine is to give the best answer to a search query in the minimum time. That is their reason TO BE, and AltaVista died because Google came with more ... accuracy. That’s it, that's the business.

Now, in the "assemblee nationale" the French most important chamber of representatives, they voted a new law which says "search engines have to give a better ranking to legal offers".
It's an attempt to decrease online music and movies piracy. i say an attempt, because of course, it cannot work, and here are SOME of the reasons why :

1) You are asking the search engines to change their... algorithm!  You touch the very essential, the core of what makes their glory or their doom. And of course, they won't change it to please the French parliament. if
They become less accurate, they lose customers, so they lose money...

2) Who will decide what to promote and what NOT to promote? the new HADOPI structure? the French government? on which objective element?
- Elysee (French president office):  hello Google, please give more importance to "la fnac" and less importance to "dailymotion" because la fnac has no copied content...
- Google guy : sure no problem mister president, do you want us to rank elysee.fr higher than whitehouse.gov for your convenience as well ... :o)

I just speak here of the SERP (search engine response pages) aspect, without talking of the many MANY other problems this law creates
 (by the way, wasn't it supposed to solve problems.... hum, anyways).