DuckDuckGo’s anti-dodgy-content campaign has now expanded to include digital bootleggers. TorrentFreak has uncovered that numerous big pirate websites, such as The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and Fmovies, are no longer included in the search engine – hunt for anything from their domains and you’ll come up empty-handed. Flixtor and 2conv, both streaming and stream-ripping sites, return no results, while other pirate sites (such as RarBG) may only return one result instead of the hundreds of thousands seen elsewhere.
Despite previous legal arguments, the site for the video download tool YouTube-dl also returns no results. While the Recording Industry Association of America has presented YouTube-dl as a pirate tool, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, GitHub, and others have discovered that it does not rip DRM-protected content.
DuckDuckGo has been contacted for comment. However, as TorrentFreak points out, responsibility for copyright infractions could be a problem. As early as 2018, the company eliminated pirate “bangs” (shortcuts for pirate sites), while competitors such as Google and Microsoft are already penalizing piracy-related searches. This decision could shield DuckDuckGo from pricey copyright lawsuits.
DuckDuckGo has long been an excellent alternative for individuals who wish to search the web without using Google, which has been by far the most dominant force in search over the last two decades. It’s even had a mobile browser for the privacy-conscious for a while.
Now, though, it’s achieving a goal of becoming a serious challenger to Google Chrome and Firefox in the world of desktop browsers. It’s releasing a new browser, with a Mac version first and a Windows version afterwards.
This isn’t surprising given that it shared a glimpse at the browser at the end of 2021, but it’s excellent news for those who want to know that their data isn’t being harvested indiscriminately when they browse the web.
For added protection, the browser prioritizes HTTPS versions of websites where possible, as well as capabilities to help you disable trackers and the ability to wipe your browser’s data clean with a single button.
It will also save all of your history, bookmarks, and passwords locally, ensuring that nothing can be accessed online. One feature we like the sound of is that it will aim to refuse cookie consent pop-ups with as few cookies as possible, so you don’t have to deal with them all the time – it should work on roughly half of all websites at first.
If there’s any bad news here, it’s that you won’t be able to download the browser and try it out right now. For the time being, it’s only available via invitation, but you may join the waiting list using the DuckDuckGo mobile app’s settings and tapping on the DuckDuckGo for Desktop option on the most recent version.
