Also, it doesn't sound like they're making blanket removals of a blacklist, they're just factoring copyright violations into their ranking algorithms. I'm surprised they weren't already doing this, as it seems like not doing so would cross the line from "we can't be responsible for what our links point to" to "we are actively ignoring illegal use of our platform".

If you don't like this, it's clearly just a symptom of copyright laws you don't like, and not really an issue with the search engines.