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Google Receives 3 Million 'Pirate Link' Takedown Requests Everyday: Report

Google Receives 3 Million 'Pirate Link' Takedown Requests Everyday: Report

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 21 June 2016 18:15 IST

Highlights

Rights holders' DMCA takedown request quadrupled in two years.
22 million pirate links reported this year.
Google has removed a billion pirate links since 2011.

Search giant Google has been receiving many DMCA takedown requests from copyright holders in the past two years. Google claims that it currently deals with as many as three million 'pirate' links every single day.

The takedown requests have particularly increased recently, and have quadrupled in the past two years. Torrentfreak reveals that in 2014, 5.1 million links were reported to Google. However, two years later the number has increased dramatically to 22 million.

DMCA takedown requests are from copyright holders, who ask Google to remove specific websites from its search results who infringe their rights, and pirate similar content on the Web. Sometimes, those pirate links show up high above in Google search results, disadvantaging the copyright holder. Google facilitates rights holders the right to remove such links through the DMCA law. After the report is submitted, Google looks into it and erases pirate links from its search index.

The report further states that Google has removed over a billion pirate links from its search results since 2011. If the trend continues, then Google is expected to cross the two billion mark in just a few months from now. In 2016 alone, the tech company is expected to receive a billion takedown reports, out of which most of the links will be scrubbed off from the search results.

The increase in volume of such pirate sites and DMCA request, has garnered the attention of artists, musicians, and even the US government. A large group of people are asking for revisions in the DMCA law, and want an effective tool that manages the flood gates more effectively. They want a process that would ensure that the infringed content doesn't reappear on the web somewhere else. Currently, they find the DMCA law dysfunctional, obsolete, and harmful.

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