Google Asked to Remove 558 Million Pirate Links in 2015
The year 2015 has been a remarkable year for copyright holders. They have managed to get their voices heard, and concerns addressed by the international governments. The copyright holders have such a strong influence that search engine giant, Google has received a staggering number of requests – approximately 560,000,000 – to takedown websites that promote copyright infringement.
It is to be noted that during the last half of 2015, the anti-piracy groups, such as MPAA and RIAA have flooded Google with requests to issue DMCA-like notices to websites that lead their users to pirated content.
Approximations are misleading. Actually the anti-piracy groups have become more pro-active than ever before. The number of requests that Google has received throughout the year 2015, is well in excess of 558 million. A hefty 60% increase in the number of requests received during the year 2015. It is for the first time in the history that the number reported pirated links has touched half a billion mark. This indicates a 60% increase overall, as compared to 345 million links that were reportedly processed by Google during the year 2014.
Most of the takedown requests have come from music companies, movie production houses, as the fact stands that movies and songs are readily available for downloaders, who take advantage by using a website that promotes and permits downloading and sharing pirated content.
The top three domains, for which Google received the highest number of takedown requests during 2015 are: chomikuj.pl, rapidgator.net and uploaded.net. Each of these domains were accounted for seven million targeted links. The British Music Group, BPI is the leading copyright holder for the year 2015, with more than 65 million reported links.
Moreover, more than 27,000 copyright holders targeted 329,469 domain names that were supposed to be involved in copyright infringement. These numbers are interpreted differently by Google and other copyright owners.
Meanwhile, the copyright owners have called for outright ban on websites that encourage users to use pirated content, Google has held on its own stance against the whole-site removal, citing that across the board censorship may harm other legitimate websites, thereby conflicting with the right to information access, and freedom of speech provision, that form an important part of American Bill of Rights.
It is to be noted that Google does not take any action against websites that don’t promote pirated content.
As the situation stands, the number of requests to remove pirated links from Google’s search results will increase in near future. There will no stoppage to the flood of takedown requests on behalf of the copyright owners. The year 2016 may well see the number of takedown requests surge to a billion within no time.
