Google has published detailed information on the wide variety of DMCA takedown requests the company receives for its search engine. During the last month alone Google was asked to remove 1,246,713 links across 24,129 domains, including many torrent sites and cyberlockers. Interestingly enough, Google receives the most takedowns for FilesTube, a colleague search-engine which by itself honors DMCA takedown requests and already removes even more links than Google does.
Under the DMCA copyright holders have the right to demand that websites disable access to infringing content. One of the top recipients of these notices is without a doubt Google.
To give the public insight into the scope and nature of this process Google has decided to publish all takedown requests online as part of their transparency report.
“Specifically, we’re disclosing the number of requests we get from copyright owners and the organizations that represent them to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content,” Google states.
