[governance] Google Lifts The Veil On Copyright Takedowns: Reveals Detailed Data On Who Requests Link Removals

Tue Sep 4 00:17:15 EDT 2012

This is very interesting.

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Nice one from Google...
>
>
> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/17520119054/google-lifts-veil-copyright-takedowns-reveals-detailed-data-who-requests-link-removals.shtml
> Google Lifts The Veil On Copyright Takedowns: Reveals Detailed Data On Who
> Requests Link Removals from the *data-data-data* dept
>
> As part of Google's ongoing Transparency Report<http://google.com/transparencyreport>efforts, today the company has released a whole new section on copyright
> takedowns <http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright>,
> containing a huge amount of information on the many takedown requests
> Google receives<http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2012/05/transparency-for-copyright-removals-in.html>.
> It focuses specifically on the takedowns for *search* links, but I
> wouldn't be surprised to see them add other areas later. As you may recall,
> we were among those who were victimized<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120223/15102217856/key-techdirt-sopapipa-post-censored-bogus-dmca-takedown-notice.shtml>by a bogus takedown, and a key post about SOPA that we had written was
> missing from Google search for about a month.
>
> The new transparency platform lets you dig in and see quite a few details
> about exactly *who* is issuing takedowns and what they're removing from
> search. It's using data since last July (when Google set up an organized
> web-form, so the data is consistent). It may be a bit surprising, but at
> the top of the list? *Microsoft*, who has apparently taken down over *2.5
> million URLs* from Google's search results. Most of the the others in the
> top 10 aren't too surprising. There's NBC Universal at number two. The RIAA
> at number three (representing all its member companies). BPI at number
> five. Universal Music at number seven. Sony Music at number eight. Warner
> Music doesn't clock in until number 12.
>  <http://imgur.com/ca8BN> There's also data on which sites are most
> frequently *targeted*, which (not surprisingly) lists out a bunch of
> torrent search sites and file lockers and such. Don't be surprised to see
> some try to claim that this is an accurate list of "rogue sites" that
> Google should block entirely. However, if you look carefully at the data,
> Google also highlights the *percentage* of pages on those sites for which
> they've received takedowns, and the vast majority of them are well below
> 1%. In other words, no one has complained about well over 99% of the pages
> on these sites. It seems pretty drastic to suggest that these sites are
> obviously nothing but evil, when so many of their pages don't seem to
> receive any complaints at all.  <http://imgur.com/fGWWb> Perhaps more
> important, however, is that Google is also revealing the incredible *
> deluge* of takedown requests it receives in search, each of which it
> tries to check to make sure they're legitimate. As it stands now, Google is
> processing *over 250,000 such requests per week* -- which is more than
> they got *in the entire year* of 2009. For all of 2011, Google receive
> 3.3 million copyright takedowns for search... and here we are in just May
> of 2012, and they're already processing over 1.2 million *per month*. And
> while we've heard reports from the usual Google haters that Google is slow
> to respond to takedowns, it says that its average turnaround time last week
> was 11 hours. Think about that for a second. It's reviewing each one of
> these takedowns, getting 250,000 per week... and can still process them in
> less than 12 hours. That's pretty impressive.
>
> It's also interesting to hear that these reviews catch some pretty
> flagrant bogus takedown requests:
>
> * At the same time, we try to catch erroneous or abusive removal
> requests. For example, we recently rejected two requests from an
> organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to
> remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper’s review of a TV
> show. The requests mistakenly claimed copyright violations of the show,
> even though there was no infringing content. We’ve also seen baseless
> copyright removal requests being used for anticompetitive purposes, or to
> remove content unfavorable to a particular person or company from our
> search results. *
>
> It's good to see Google catch these, as plenty of other sites would
> automatically take such content down, just to avoid any question of
> liability. Of course, it doesn't catch them all. Some get through -- as we
> ourselves discovered a few months ago. That led us to wonder if this tool
> could drill down and find the details about takedowns targeting Techdirt, but
> unfortunately at the moment there doesn't seem to be any way to actually *
> search* the list. Hopefully that will change soon. *Update:* The search
> function is not currently advertised anywhere, but you can access it by
> using a URL: *
> http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/
> yourdomain.com/* <http://imgur.com/TdAvX> Of course, this is also a good
> reminder -- as they note in the Google blog post -- that if you run a
> website, you should absolutely sign up to use Google's Webmaster tools<http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools>,
> which will quickly inform you when one of your URLs are targeted by such a
> takedown, allowing you to easily file a counternotice.
>
> Either way, this is really fascinating data and an interesting platform,
> shedding some significant light on just how often copyright holders are
> trying to take links out of Google, who's doing it and who they're
> targeting.
>
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