It's something of a breakthrough for the record industry: Google has agreed to punish sites proven to infringe copyright by pushing down their rankings in its search results.

Although the search giant stops short at agreeing to delist piracy sites completely, it has committed to altering its algorithm to reflect the amount of copyright removal notices it receives. It won't go short of them: during May, the BPI requested over 160,000 URL takedowns.

The changes will come into effect next ...