In a post to its “Policy by the Numbers” blog on December 11, 2012, Google Legal Director Fred Von Lohmann announced the company was providing information about how often it removes search results that link to material that allegedly infringes on copyrights. Whereas the internet search giant received 250,000 copyright removal requests per week when it first launched a feature in its Transparency Report disclosing how many requests it received, the number increased tenfold in just six months to over 2.5 million requests per week. “While we’re now receiving and processing more requests more quickly than ever (on average, within approximately six hours), we still do our best to catch errors or abuse so we don’t mistakenly disable access to non-infringing material,” Von Lohmann wrote.
Von Lohmann wrote that the data shown for copyright removals in the Transparency Report will be updated every day, and Google will also be providing information about how often it removes search results that link to allegedly infringing material. The company will disclose how many URLs it removed for each request and specified website, the overall removal rate for each request and the specific URLs we did not act on. According to Von Lohmann, Google removed 97.5 percent of all URLs specified in copyright removal requests between December 2011 and November 2012.
“We’ll continue to fine tune our removals process to fight online piracy while providing information that gives everyone a better picture of how it works,” Von Lohmann wrote. “By making our copyright data available in detail, we hope policymakers will be able to see whether or not laws are serving their intended purpose and being enforced in the public interest.”
A Newsy.com video discusses how Google began penalizing websites frequently accused of copyright infringement with lower appearances in search results when the company updated its algorithm in August 2012. You should also know that if you or your company may be entitled to monetary damages if you have experienced theft of your protected work, and you can find additional information about intellectual property litigation on our website. If an individual or another entity has distributed or sold your copyrighted material, contact our firm at [number] or fill out the form on this page to let our Los Angeles copyright infringement lawyer review your case.
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