Google remove 1 million ‘infringing’ links, every month

Google remove around 1 million links, every month. These links lead to infringing content, such as video games, music, software and movie downloads. The interesting part of the report is that over half of the requests for removal originate from Microsoft.

Google released the data late last week as they highlighted sortable analytics on the copyright takedown requests they receive. The company remove links to comply with the Digitial Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA demands that search engines remove links to infringing content or else they face liability for copyright infringement themselves. Google have said they comply with 97 percent of the requests which are submitted by an online form and then approved.

Microsoft were the top company to demand the removal of links, over 543,000 last month alone. The British Recorded Music Industry reported 162,000 links and the NBC around 145,000.

The worst offending sites hosting the content were torrents.eu, 4shared.com and filestube.com.

Surprisingly well known Pirate Bay only took 13th place with 10,245 takedown requests. Google received 1,24 million requests from 1,296 copyright holders for removal in the last month, which targeted 24,129 domains.

Kitguru says: The data is tracked back almost a year, when Google began automated their removal procedure and making it easier for rights holders to issue demands via an online link.

Become a Patron!