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It turns out that Google is currently receiving and processing an all time high of one million piracy link removal requests per day, proving that copyright holders and media lobby groups just don't give up. The media Industry's new tactic is to simply overload Google with DMCA takedown requests, all in an effort to deter piracy, rather than put more effort in to providing better services.
A few years back, Google would only receive a few dozen takedown requests per year but as you can see on company's public record, the number has risen dramatically since then. To put everything into perspective, Google is asked to take down a new infringing link every eight milliseconds, as opposed to only receiving one takedown notice every six days back in 2008.
Here's a list of the companies sending in the most requests.
Now obviously, copyright holders do have the right to protect intellectual property but flooding Google with DMCA requests is not a viable method. Google simply doesn't have the man power to process every single request and as a result, innocent sites have fallen through the cracks in the past, being accidentally removed due to fraudulent takedown notices.
While Google has stated that it is doing its best to appease copyright holders, some media groups are claiming that the company can do more. Brad Buckles, RIAA Executive Vice President of anti-piracy, has previously stated that he believes that Google should ban entire domains from its search engine: “Every day produces more results and there is no end in sight. We are using a bucket to deal with an ocean of illegal downloading.”
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KitGuru Says: I don't get why all of these problems fall on to Google. It might be the biggest Internet search engine in the world but it shouldn't be responsible for the media industry's often ancient business practises and refusal to provide better services. DMCA takedowns won't deter piracy, better distribution of content at a fair price will. What do you guys think? Is it fair that Google has to deal with millions of DMCA requests every week?
A great many things need to change
A) The distribution models for some things, which may include drm. If you purchase a game historically before online validation on disc you could re install easily it took time. Then came Steam and Origin and the rest. You can Install on many of the same platform type but you must Auth before play. If you buy a game on PC you cannot automatically play on PS or Xbox. Yet if you buy a MP3 there may be a client for multiple platforms and you can play it on all of them legally.
B) The Pricing Model, If I can buy a film physically on disc for 6 quid I am not going to pay 13 to buy it online, similar with games. Almost all of the games with a Year Pass pushing the games to three figures have been steaming piles of S**t until the end of the first year while they fix the bugs then the GOTY version at a quarter of the price comes out that is fixed. If you can buy an album for 8 quid – why is each track one pound?. Why can these license rights not move between platforms if I buy the soundtrack online to Guardians of the Galaxy on Amazon on CD I get a download for free – great. Why not the same with a Hardback book, why does the ebook which costs very little to distribute not come free with a physical copy.
C) DRM I have items purchased from about 6 different online platforms that if I adopted the Jolly Roger like drm removal tools I could use on any of my mobile devices + PC. With no legal way to accomplish the same thing
Instead thanks to combinations of A, B, and C I have to read books on one device, video’s on another, but not my other video capable device because it can only live on one. I cannot easily move the files between devices based on what one I’m logged into at the time even with cloud apps on all of the platforms (except the kindle 🙂 ) and every manufacturer want to push me onto their branded ‘shop’.
The pirates win, the item is portable and you can enjoy it where ever and whenever – even when the online service disappears with all your paid for licensed stuff.
Ditch the DRM you can sell to more people longterm
Adopt open formats, it will make both devices and the experience move-able.
allow shops to compete on price and help to get rid of device monopoly’s.
forget the days of 5 quid profit for the shop on 5K sales and adopt the 10p profit on 250K sales, if it doesn’t sell 250K then it probably wasn’t that good to start with. with of course upward scale ability.
Start to bundle electronic with physical, e.g. if there is a video file version – put it on the disk/s, ditto mp3’s on albums.
In this day where you buy a PC at say 300 quid and it has all the electronics and power to play a Blu-ray. why does a player app cost 100 quid when a physical player can be had for 40 quid.
I look at this as a middle aged bloke who has owned some bloody expensive platforms in the past. and spent a fortune on content over the years.
Laser Disc – 60 quid a movie, DVD when it first came out 25 quid a pop , Consoles from the 80’s on-wards games at 25 quid when that purchased the equivilent of 30 pints of beer, Computers both during and after the OS and Windows wars from 8bit to 64bit. Now all that early stuff can be emulated by a 35quid Rasp Pi and I have a loft full of old stuff..
Sometimes I am thankful for my 750ish words per minute reading. It was a good read 😛
An interesting read and some very valid points, but I love playing devils advocate so here we go (please note, I don’t necessarily agree with everything I am about to say, but wish to throw up some valid counter arguments!):-
A) But that has always been the case with a lot of media. Buying a game on my Megadrive didn’t mean I got the SNES version for free, same with VHS’s and DVD’s, or buying a vinyl back in the day doesn’t mean I got the cassette version. In this online world DRM is a sad necessity, otherwise piracy would be even more rampant than it already is.
B) This is beginning to happen more and more, many films now come with digital versions included if you buy the DVD/BR, Marvel comics include a digital copy of with all $3.99 books and I believe the law about not being able to turn CD’s you own into MP3’s has pretty much been dropped/ignored everywhere. On the buggy game note, no excuse. Thanks to the always online world devs are happy to release games unfinished and patch them later, something that couldn’t happen a few gens ago, so they had to make sure all the bugs were caught in QA and not leave the paying public to do that for them, but the GOTY argument doesn’t hold water. If nobody buys it at launch then the game will get no support and that GOTY edition will probably never see the light of day.
C) Most things are already like this, if I buy a book on Kindle then I can read it on my PC, phone, tablet, Kindle with no issues. I cannot think of anything other than games and books that suffer this issue, and as previously stated, that has always been the case with games and I believe that the printed book industry needs to move with the times or risk becoming less relevant.
DRM is ultimately a chicken and egg scenario, people claim to pirate because of DRM (although I doubt 90% of them would still buy it without it, it’s just a convenient excuse), and companies claim to use DRM because of piracy (a legitimate argument, but I suspect it is more to do with control). Ultimately we live in the same capitalist market we always have (before the days of the internet), a company is free to charge what they think their product is worth and we as consumers have the right to either pay that or not buy it, what we don’t have the right to do is steal their product because we don’t think it represented value for money, that’s just entitlement. We have even less right to steal it and then give it to thousands of other people who claim they are only doing it because they don’t think it’s worth the money, if you believe that then you should wait until the price drops to a point where you think it does. I have friends who create work for sale (music, video and games) and frankly unless you are already at the top of the tree piracy really DOES hurt the creator, you can try and justify it with the faceless corporation stuff, but what you are really saying is that they should be working for free (something that nobody deserves, we abolished slavery long ago)
Yours sincerely, middle aged bloke who too has owned many expensive platforms over the last 20 years.
*sorry, went off on a slight anti-piracy tangent there, but still relevant*