Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 2 August 2016 to Question 42624, what the evidential basis is for the conclusion that there has been a decrease in autocomplete suggestions from search engines providing access to stream ripping and online converter websites.

Work to reduce the prevalence of autocomplete suggestions which are likely to lead search engine users to infringing websites is still ongoing, and so it is not yet possible to analyse the resultant effectiveness of these measures.

This work is discussed by representatives of the creative industries and search engines at the round table meetings chaired by my noble Friend Baroness Neville-Rolfe as Minister for Intellectual Property. OFCOM provide research for these meetings utilising results which they take from publicly accessible search interfaces.