As filesharing sites continue to hop domains and spawn new copies, so the task of sending takedown messages to Google about them is growing. TorrentFreak has been crunching some data from Google’s transparency report on DMCA takedown requests, noting that in the week starting 18 August alone, Google processed nearly 13.7m requests. By comparison, in November 2012 just 2.9m such requests were processed.
Why the huge increase? Because sending takedowns to a site like The Pirate Bay now requires targeting multiple versions of the site: .se, .sx, .tn, .ee and so on. “For a piece of content previously found on a single URL on ThePirateBay.se alone, rightsholders now have to send a similar notice for every other domain the site decides to put into action. It’s a never-ending battle that’s causing millions of additional takedown demands,” suggests the report. Yet with Google now using successful DMCA requests to guide its downranking of sites linked to piracy, it’s a battle that rightsholders clearly feel is worth the effort.
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