Copyright and piracy: Google harassed by delete demands

More than in any other field, copyright infractions are the main reason that links are removed from the Google search engine, following copyright holder requests. Microsoft is the most often affected.

Google has updated their Transparency Report. This shows the areas around the world where Google’s services are blocked (government blocking or technical problem), the number of deletion requests made by users and governmental requests for user information.

This report now includes for the first time a new section related to copyright. This section appears necessary for Google to be able to provide transparency in the ongoing fight against copyright violation, as this is the main reason that links are removed from search engines.

Over a single month in April, Google received close to 1.25 million URL removal requests from their search engine, for close to 24000 targeted domains. These requests concerned close to 1300 copyright holders.

Among the main sites visited we find FilesTube, Torrentz.eu, 4Shared and The Pirate Bay. A long list which also provides an idea of the searches being conducted by internet users…

Still looking at April, close to half of the URL’s subject to deletion (543 748) were related to data protected by Microsoft, a rather surprising fact as the music and movie industries are by far the largest requestors that URL’s be removed by the search giant.

Over a year it is still Microsoft which is in the lead, with more than 2.5 million URL’s being removed from close to 23 500 domains. The second and third places are held by NBC Universal and the RIAA.

Google is also pushing their notification and illegal content removal procedure which treats requests in less than 11 hours. Google does point out that they don’t blindly accept all requests though, with any erroneous and abusive requests being investigated.

Google’s report is available here.