TorrentFreak

Today we are beginning to see the first signs of Google’s announced punishment of “pirate” websites. The changes are resulting in lower search rankings for many file-sharing sites, but that doesn’t seem to bother The Pirate Bay. They are, however, disappointed that Google is giving in to the demands of the entertainment industries. The owner of fellow BitTorrent site isoHunt has gone a step further with a call for protest against antitrust bullying and censorship.

Google announced today that it will lower the search engine rankings of websites that receive a high number of DMCA takedown requests, independent of whether the linked content is lawful or not. The algorithm change is the result of extensive lobbying efforts by Hollywood and the major music labels, and could severely degrade the rankings of websites such as The Pirate Bay, FilesTube, and even YouTube.

Google has suffered a setback in its case against the music industry group SNEP. Last week the French Supreme Court ruled that Google can be required to censor the search terms ‘Torrent’, ‘RapidShare’ and ‘Megaupload’ from its Instant and Autocomplete services. The court argued that Google indirectly facilitates copyright infringement by failing to filter these terms. The case is now going to the Appeals Court for a final decision.

By indexing all copyright takedown requests online, Google is rapidly building the world’s largest database of links to pirated content. Just last week, a record-breaking 719,415 new URLs were added to the takedown database. Copyright holders are responding to this effort with a comical display of meta-censorship, in which Google is asked to remove links to takedown requests, because these link to sites that link to copyrighted material.

Last month YouTube-MP3, one of the web’s largest YouTube conversion sites, was hit with legal threats from Google. Shut down in seven days, its lawyers ordered, or face legal repercussions. Now, after commissioning the legal opinions of two prominent German lawyers, the site’s owner is fighting back, and not without support. A Change.org petition which asks Google to allow conversion tools has already accumulated more than 220,000 signatures.

When it comes to entitlement, few private companies can match the RIAA. The latest cause of their whines is Google. After Google published their report last week on DMCA takedowns, the RIAA is determined to make out that Google is the problem, because almost 1.25 million removed links in one year wasn’t enough, and it’s all Google’s fault, despite the search giant having absolutely no hand in putting any of them online.

Google has published detailed information on the wide variety of DMCA takedown requests the company receives for its search engine. During the last month alone Google was asked to remove 1,246,713 links across 24,129 domains, including many torrent sites and cyberlockers. Interestingly enough, Google receives the most takedowns for FilesTube, a colleague search-engine which by itself honors DMCA takedown requests and already removes even more links than Google does.