A French high court has shot down a requested court order that would have forced search engines like Google and Bing to remove search results that include the word “torrent.”

The order was requested by Syndicat national de l’édition phonographique (SNEP), a French music industry organization similar to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). SNEP argued that torrents are used to distribute pirated music, but the French court argued that not only was SNEP’s request was far too broad, but also that the word “torrent” has meanings outside of peer-to-peer networks and should not be censored.

Here’s what the court said (via Ars Technica):

SNEP’s requests are general because they do not concern a specific site, but all sites accessed by the methods cited, without considering the identification or even determination of the site’s content, based on the premise that the term “Torrent” is necessarily associated with infringing content, while it is primarily a common noun, which has a meaning in French and English, but also means a neutral communication protocol developed by the company Bittorrent, which provides access to files that can be downloaded lawfully, or corresponds to the names of artists or groups, or is included in site names.

While torrents are often used to distribute pirated software, music, movies, and other illicit digital goods, they are also used as a legitimate download source for a number of applications. For example, popular Linux distribution Ubuntu offers official torrent links for its operating systems for users who have trouble downloading them directly. In the past, World of Warcraft and Overwatch creator Blizzard Entertainment also used a peer-to-peer torrent system to distribute its games and content patches. Torrent technology is also used in a number of development applications, such as enterprise-grade file syncing systems like Resilio Connect.

In addition to denying SNEP’s request to censor torrent search results, the French court has ordered the organization to pay €10,000 (roughly $11,000 USD) to cover legal fees for Google and Microsoft.

Photo by theanthonyryan