Google axed 200mn search results in 2013 over piracy claims
Washington – Google has reportedly removed about 200 million search links from its platform in 2013 after they were found to be allegedly linked to pirated content.
Copyright holders have demanded that the search giant remove four times as many links to allegedly pirated content in 2013 as last year’s 50 million.
A staff attorney focusing on intellectual property at the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Mitch Stoltz said that the increase in takedowns isn’t necessarily connected to an increase in piracy or pirated content online, Mashable reports.
Stoltz pointed that it is rather because entertainment lobbies have decided to ramp up their takedown notices and it is totally under control how many notices they send in a year.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Internet companies can avoid being held liable, and hence sued, if they remove content that rights holders say infringes on their copyrights.
The MPAA tried to assess the role that search engines played in leading people to pirated content online and found that search engines influenced 20 percent of the sessions in which consumers accessed infringing TV or film content online between 2010 and 2012, the report added.
