Google takedown requests top 100m this year

Google has been asked to remove links to more than 100 million websites accused of IP infringement since January, averaging around 25 million per month.

The figures, taken from the company’s transparency report, a month-by-month account of all the takedown requests the company receives, show the biggest surge in requests since the report was first published in 2011.

Last month alone the search engine received 25,785,604.

Among the biggest filers of takedown requests was the British Phonographic Industry, which represents the UK’s recorded music industry.

According to Google’s figures the BPI filed just under 4.5 million requests in the past month.

Last year, Google did not hit the 100 million mark for the year until the end of July, and that figure was double the number it received for the whole of 2012.

In 2008, the search engine received only a few takedown requests, according to the Torrentfreak website.

The takedown requests were filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a US law that provides online service providers like Google with safety from copyright infringement claims provided they remove access to allegedly infringing material on request.

Google said it has removed 97 percent of search results specified in requests within six hours.

Last month, WIPR reported that the US government was considering amending the DMCA system.

Referring to a green paper released by the Department of Commerce in June last year, Shira Perlmutter, chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the US Patent and Trademark Office, said there were concerns about the volume of notices received and the fact that right holders do not have time to trawl through the internet looking for potentially infringing websites.

Perlmutter added that once an infringing website is removed it can be immediately re-posted.

A series of webinars will be held for people to put forward their concerns and ideas on how the DMCA can be improved.